Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Archive for December 5th, 2007

I was wondering what topic to write about today, because after yesterday’s drop in interest rate by the Central Bank I was a bit confused and not really sure what was going on in this wacky financial world we live in. Luckily TD/Canada Trust dropped a topic near and dear to my heart straight in my lap.

Automated Investor Profiles

I was doing my end of year RESP investments into one of my daughters’ accounts, and I decided to keep going with one of the mutual funds that seemed to be doing quite well in her portfolio. I did a little research, saw the return was suitable and the MER was low, so on line I go to purchase said Mutual Fund.

I thought no more of it, as I had put in my purchase instructions and was given a transaction ID and I assumed that it was all going to just happen (I can hear you already, oh you poor naive boy).

Unknown to me was that my “Investor Profile” for this specific account was going to come and bite me in the tuchus. (yes when I get angry I jump to Yiddish as my language of choice, it works very well in these situations).

I received an e-mail overnight informing me that since this investment did not fit into my “Investor Profile” for this account, the transaction was not carried out, and here I sit one day later and no further ahead.

While I agree that there should be some checking going on for some investments, in this case I find this quite rude and annoying, for the following reasons:

• I must now phone someone to do the same transaction, and I really hate redoing something (especially when I didn’t do anything wrong).
• I am going to have to redo my “Investor Profile” questionnaire which will “only take 5 minutes” to answer all the inane questions. I think I will actually laugh out loud when the person on the phone says the “it will only take 5 minutes” to me AGAIN.
• I will waste another 45 minutes of my life on a purchase that should have taken 5 minutes (not including the time I am spending ranting in this blog, but then again, I view this as therapy).

The worst part of this is, I will most likely have to do the same for my other Children’s accounts as well.

I think InvestorLine or whatever portion of TD I am going to deal with (no it is not on the Investment side of things, it is in it’s Mutual Funds world, so it is even harder to deal with) should send the e-mail saying, “Are you sure?”, and if you are sure you can simply go back on line and click a button that says, “Yes I know this does not fit my Investment Profile, but I am a grown up and realize that it is my mistake to make”. Sounds like a good idea to me, but I am biased as well.