Employee Discount, What Does it Mean?
I note one of the major banks is now offering Employee Rate Mortgages, attempting to entice you to move your mortgage over to their bank, with the promise of the same kind of discounts or lower rates that you would only receive if you were an employee of said bank. This continues on from the automobile manufacturers (specifically Ford) that offers Employee Rate discounts on their cars, but what kind of discount are you really getting?
RBC even touts these discounts when trying to entice new employees:
Whether you are looking to arrange a loan or buy a home, employee banking benefits can help you reach your financial goals. You’ll have access to valuable discounts on a wide range of banking, investment and insurance services, including reduced mortgage rates and reduced home and auto insurance rates.
These must be amazing discounts, and they are willing to give any person who walked in off the street the exact same “employee enticing” savings that they offer to their new hires ? That is amazing, but if they are giving you the same “insiders” rate that they give their own employees, weren’t those same folks taxed on that “benefit”?
The Employee Discount Scam
No, this has little to do with the employees of RBC, and more to do with car financing marketing schemes from the Automobile industry. The Mortgage business is becoming quite cut-throat, so this is RBC attempting to differentiate themselves from their competitors by cloaking a better deal with the promise of it being an “insider’s deal” (thus assuredly the best deal you could possibly get).
What is next? I can see the marketing scheme already,
If you can find a better mortgage deal, you bring it to us and we will match that deal!
No, wait, that is precisely how the Mortgage business currently works.
Given our finance minister’s laissez faire attitude towards the banking industry lately, we may see more interesting “marketing schemes” introduced to entice us to move our hard earned cash to another banking institution.
Changing banks is fine, but make sure you get a good deal when you do it.
The sad thing is that employees of some banks actually did used to get a discount on the mortgage rate. In fact, during the days of 15%+ mortgages, a relative working at TD got quite a big discount, enough to make buying a house possible. I guess like “off-shoring” and other cost-cutting measures, employee perks have been downsized as well.