Opening a bank account in a new country isn't quite as straightforward as you'd think, mainly due to the concept of credit history. As touched on in our story First Steps, your credit score needs to be built from scratch before you can do anything that requires lending you money (bills, credit cards, etc.).
Credit Score
Credit scores are a number (also called a FICO score) calculated by a company called Fair, Isaac, and Company. They aggregate information from your credit history reports kept by credit-reporting agencies, in Canada Equifax and TransUnion. In Canada, credit scores range from 300 (just getting started) up to 900 points, which is the best score. According to TransUnion, 650 is the magic middle number - a score above 650 will likely qualify you for a standard loan while a score under 650 will likely bring difficulty in receiving new credit.[1]
As we're new to the country, our score is likely very low. We can't check it, however, as merely the act of checking your score imparts a tiny hit on the score itself. The only way to build this score is to start doing things that prove you're good at managing money. Paying bills on time is really the key; phone bills, utility bills, credit card payments, finance payments, etc. It'll likely take us two to three years to get our credit score to a reasonable level, so we're just going to have to learn to live with this limitation on our lives.
Anyhow, as we don't have a useful credit score, we had to open a bank account with a bank that offers a 'New to Canada' package. These packages give you a few accounts with all standard fees waived for a year, and a low-limit credit card to help you begin to build your history. After lots of research, none of these big banks was an obvious winner, so I chose CIBC based on their Google Play Store rating, and the fact that they were the only one on the list who supported Android Pay.
We talked to Zoe at our closest CIBC branch, and she got our accounts all set up with almost no hassle at all. We got our debit cards immediately, but the credit cards had to be approved and then manufactured offsite. Because we don't have a permanent address yet, Zoe offered that we could just have them shipped to the bank and they'd call us when we could come pick them up. Everyone is so helpful! We deposited almost all of our cash at the ATM, and headed to the nearest bar to celebrate our latest success!
Later that evening we kicked off our first TransferWise transfer, to enable our upcoming car purchase. TransferWise reported that the money would take three to four days to appear in our Canadian account. It would have been faster, but we started the transaction on Waitangi day which added an extra day to the process.
Unfortunately, our joy was short-lived. The following day Katie tried to buy a coffee, and the card machine reported a problem with the transaction. We checked our online banking page which showed both our chequing and savings account balances as "Not available". Aaah! Panic! I rang the online banking support number, and after waiting on hold for 15 minutes (remember, Canada = queues) a guy told me that there seemed to be a problem with the ID we'd provided when we opened the account. His level of access only extended to online banking though so he couldn't help us. We had to talk to the branch directly. I rang Zoe directly, but she didn't answer, so I left her a voice message. After that I rang the branch's general enquiry line and was told "Yes, we see there's a problem with your ID, Zoe can fix this for you. I'll ask her to call you back". 5:30pm came and went with no call, so we paid for dinner with our wisely unbanked buffer.
On Wednesday morning we walked to the Branch, arriving about five minutes after they opened. Zoe was very apologetic; it seemed she'd made a mistake when submitting our information to their back office. The fix was easy, she just had to let the back office know that she'd sighted the correct IDs. She was quite upset at the trouble she'd caused us, so we didn't push the issue too hard to make her feel even worse. We were worried, however, that because our accounts were 'on hold' our imminent TransferWise deposit would get bounced. Zoe sent off some emails to their back office and promised to call us as soon as she had a resolution.
About ten minutes after we'd left I received a phone call from her; she'd talked to her branch manager, who had authorised a temporary release of our savings account, where the TransferWise money was destined. Hopefully, this would be enough to let the deposit succeed!
Half an hour later Zoe called again and excitedly told us that all problems were resolved and our accounts were fully functional once again.
Later that evening we checked the accounts and saw that our money had arrived! Crisis averted! Luckily we'd thought to not deposit every last cent, and had kept a few notes each. Ultimately we could have fallen back to our NZ credit cards, but we really didn't want to incur international currency fees on food and bus fares. Thankfully we're now all sorted!