The Bank of Canada signalled last month that growth expectations for 2013 are reduced and therefore interest rates are not likely to move up as a result. This means the fixed income portion of your properly allocated assets will continue to provide low returns in exchange for their security.
This will mean increased vigilance for individuals to squeeze the maximum rate out of those investments and possibly some effort to ensure full potential is achieved. For those of us who practice the couch potato style of investing with its rewards of time off to do more enjoyable things, the thought of more work can be terrifying and can kick in our protective procrastination tendencies.
The failure to grab even an extra per cent on our GIC's over a 35 year investment career can mean significantly less funds at the end though, when we need them the most....when we want to spend them. Fortunately, the internet has come to our rescue and the ability to search out the best rate available is only a click or two away.
www.ratesupermarket.ca has a great feature (Compare GIC Rates) where you can select your province, amount to invest, RRSP eligibility and term length and it will produce a list of institutions that meet those criteria. I selected Ontario, $5,000, Yes to RRSP eligibility and 5 year term and it identified ICICI Bank as the top rate at 3.15%. From there it was 2 clicks to get to the ICICI website and start the enrollment process.
There were a couple of institutions missing from the list, (ING Direct and PC Financial), but I assume that was because those banks had not partnered with ratesupermarket.ca to publish their rates. The identification of ICICI as the highest rate matched that found at Cannex by Ellen Roseman in her column published in the Toronto Star Personal Finance Section a couple of days ago, so I am not worried by their absence.
The www.ratesupermarket.ca website has a lot of other good comparison information also and I invite you to look around on it. One word of warning though, you may have to get up off the couch to do it. I gotta get my computer hooked up to my TV!!
