The opinions and information in this post should not be considered investment advice. I’m writing about my true life experiences with Worldsource Financial Management and Coast Capital credit union for informational purposes only. I’m not an investment advisor and I’m not recommending any investment products. It is up to you to do your due diligence.
2 for the price of one Frustration!
Dealing with Worldsource Financial Management is an exercise in frustration. If it was up to me I wouldn’t have to put up with them at all.
Unfortunately for me the credit union I do most of my daily banking with, Coast Capital Savings, uses Worldsource Financial as the broker to purchase financial products for their clients.
That would be mutual funds.
Mutual funds with their high MER are a bad choice for people looking to grow their investments.
Coast Capital – pay close attention! You are known by the company you keep! This is not good for you. In this day and age people go where they get the best deal and the least amount of hassle. Don’t make it difficult for your clients! if you want to keep them around, that is!
Coast Capital is using Worldsource Financial as the vehicle to chase away their clients! Bizarre business strategy.
Coast Capital – You need to get your act together!
And now back to my regularly scheduled post – about the buffoons at Worldsource Financial.
TFSA Fiasco
On May 30, 2017, on the unfortunate advice from a financial advisor at Coast Capital, who can NOT manage my money better than me, I topped up my TFSA and bought $25,000 in units of a mutual fund called Black Creek Global Balanced Fund.
Or so I thought.
Worldsource Financial was behind in sending out their quarterly reports, so it wasn’t until well into November 2017 that I looked at my Worldsource statement and saw my TFSA was sitting in a cash account doing nothing. I have no idea why Worldsource screwed up and didn’t follow my instructions to buy Black Creek Global Balanced Fund. All I know is my money was sitting in a cash account not making any money.
Thanks for screwing up Worldsource!
And let’s send out a zinger to Coast Capital and their “wealth management” department or whatever they call it. Why didn’t they notice before I did that Worldsource hadn’t done the transaction? Pretty sloppy, Coast Capital!
If I want a job done right – I gotta do it myself! Nobody cares about my money more than I do!
I logged onto Questrade and initiated a transfer to bring that cash into my TFSA where I could invest it.
And you know what happened? Those morons at Worldsource who screwed up my mutual fund purchase and just left my money sitting there – charged me $52.50 to transfer the money!
Rip off! Rip off! Rip off!
Thanks a lot! Thanks for punishing me because you screwed up Worldsource! So it cost me money for Worldsource to not follow my instructions and do nothing with my money. Why am I paying to move MY money? Clearly Worldsource didn’t want to deal with my money because they refused to take action on the instructions on investing it.
Incompetent buffoons reign supreme at Worldsource Financial and scam me out of $52.50 for doing piss all! Worldsource should have been upfront with me that they had no interest in buying those mutual funds for my TFSA. If I’d known that months earlier, I could have gone directly to Questrade. But Worldsource decided to dick me around for a few months just so they could rip me off $52.50 when I pulled my money out.
The cheque’s in the mail
Worldsource is NOT done with me yet when it comes to these stupid little games they’re playing with me.
I live on a secondary home on acreage. Canada Post does not deliver out in the boonies, so I have a post office box at the Shopper’s Drug Mart where the Canada Post counter is. Just about every financial institution I deal with wants to know both my mailing address and the address where I actually live.
In 2017 Worldsource was correctly sending mail to my post office box.
At the beginning of 2018, without authorization from me, Worldsource suddenly started sending my mail to my street address. You know. The place where Canada Post does NOT deliver.
This caused me a lot of problems because I receive cheques from Worldsource. Getting re-routed to the Canada Post sorting station and causing delays for me.
The only reason I can think of that Worldsource did this was to retaliate because I transferred the TFSA money to Questrade a couple of months earlier.
It took about 4 months to convince those incompetent buffoons at Worldsource to change my address back to my correct mailing address so I could actually receive my mail!
Why are they even playing stupid little games like this in retaliation to people who move their money out? It’s a fact of life for financial institutions. People move their money around for any number of reasons.
Compare mutual fund and ETF payouts
Yeah, OK, I get it. I’m the big dummy paying too much money on management fees on two mutual funds I hold in my Worldsource account. I decided to close one of the mutual funds down and transfer the money to Questrade where I can buy better financial products.
Specifically, I’m shutting down a mutual fund called Fidelity Global Monthly Income Currency Neutral Fund that’s been a real stinker. I originally bought it to bring in extra monthly income.
Let’s see how the payments went in 2018:
| June 8 2018 | 25.82 |
| July 6 2018 | 44.49 |
| Oct. 5 2018 | 24.43 |
| December 7 2018 | 6.45 |
That totals a big whopping $101.19 for the year.
2019 hasn’t been much better. About $74.45 so far.
That’s with $25,000 invested in this stinker mutual fund.
Now for comparison, I’m going to pick on a REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust) that I purchased in my self-directed Questrade account. It’s called Smart REIT and I hold about $10,000 worth of shares to bring me income.
Here’s how it went in 2018:
| Jan. 15 | 43.75 |
| Feb 15 | 43.75 |
| March 15 | 43.75 |
| April 16 | 43.75 |
| May 15 | 43.75 |
| June 15 | 43.75 |
| July 16 | 43.75 |
| Aug 15 | 43.75 |
| Sept 17 | 43.75 |
| Oct 15 | 43.75 |
| Nov 15 | 45 |
| Dec 17 | 45 |
That totals $527.50!
Which one of these investments is the better deal? $25,000 that makes me $100 or $10,000 that makes me over $500 in the same year?
We gotta be “Smart” with our money, ladies! We’re largely ignored by financial advisors and financial companies like Worldsource don’t care about us women either! It sucks when you’re an older, single woman. Financial advisors and investing firms don’t want to deal with us because we don’t have that much money, so we have to do it ourselves.
Did you notice that Smart even gave me a raise toward the end of 2018? Yay!
In case you’re wondering, every month so far in 2019 I’ve received $45 from Smart.
That doesn’t mean I’m recommending any of you to invest in Smart. Do your research and decide if investing in this stock is a risk you want to take. There are risks whenever you buy mutual funds or stocks. Hopefully they’ll increase in value, but they can also decrease and shut down. They changed their name to SmartCentres. I just call it Smart REIT and know what I’m talking about.
Does everybody see what’s going on here? The $25,000 languishing in that stinker mutual fund managed by Worldsource has to go!
MER fees
This stinker Fidelity mutual fund has a management expense ratio (MER) of 2.28%. That’s $570 per year that it costs me to keep my money in this stinker mutual fund! Somebody’s making more money a year than I am!
Now – this is NOT what I’m planning to do with the $25,000 but let’s say hypothetically I decided to put all that money into buying shares of Vanguard’s ETF Canada All Cap Index (VCN). The MER is .06%. That’s $15 a year! And yes, that’s about average for MER on ETFs. Even if I stuck that whole $25,000 into the Vanguard Growth ETF Portfolio called VGRO (which again I’m not doing, this is hypothetical) and the higher MER of .22%, that would cost me $55 a year.
What are my choices? I can DIY my investments at Questrade and choose an ETF where I pay $15 a year in management expense ratio fees or I can have a stinker mutual fund that costs me $570/year.
I’d rather have the money in my pocket than in the pocket of some incompetent “financial advisor”.
Break it down further
Just for fun, I’m going to break down approximately what it would cost if the entire $25,000 went to purchase shares in the Smart REIT.
$25,000 would buy around 750 shares. Actually about 757 if you go by the purchase price being around $33/share.
Smart REIT currently pays a very nice monthly dividend of 15¢ a share.
750 shares would bring in a monthly dividend totaling $112.50. If the dividend stays the same, that would be $1,350 a year in dividends. More than $1,200 difference than what that stinker mutual fund pays!
With $25,000 in the Fidelity mutual fund, the annual dividend is around $100 and the MER cost is $570 just to keep the money there.
With $25,000 invested in Smart REIT shares – that will bring more than $1,300/year in dividends. And the MER? None!
Round 3
Worldsource ain’t done yet with their little games they like to play with me,
On June 5, 2019, I initiated another transfer from Worldsource to Questrade.
The plan: sell that stinker mutual fund, Fidelity Global Monthly Income Currency Neutral Fund. I can make better investing choices, like buying more shares in that Smart REIT.
On June 13 Questrade informs me that Worldsource is playing stupid about transferring my funds. I was really specific on the form which fund to sell, and used the account # for the Fidelity fund. Also listed the approximate dollar value. The other mutual fund in my account at Worldsource has a very different amount. There would be no confusing the two. I asked for it all in cash.
Now here’s where Worldsource is playing stupid:
“Incorrect transfer authorization provided. If the client only wants to transfer FID fund a/c # in cash to Questrade, the transfer instruction should be “partial in cash” instead of “all in cash” as client holds other funds within S/D Open a/c #”.
The buffoons at Worldsource want it to read “partial in cash” because of the second mutual fund. I inform Questrade to do whatever they need to do, change the wording. Just get those incompetent buffoons at Worldsource to release my money.
On June 19 Questrade tells me I have to start over and fill out a new form to get the transfer going.
Now I’m royally pissed. I don’t know if this is Worldsource screwing up as usual or Questrade screwing up, but it seems to me that if Worldsource wanted a new form all along, that could have been communicated on June 13.
Why does Worldsource make it so difficult?
But let’s go back to those incompetent buffoons at Worldsource who are playing little games. Rather than get picky over me wanting all in cash of the Fidelity fund and they want it worded partial in cash due to the second mutual fund I hold with them – couldn’t they pick up the phone and call me to clarify?
I complained and got a response from Natasa Morfesis who identified herself as Senior Director, Compliance at Worldsource Wealth Management. Basically justified their actions and said they informed Questrade the form was filled out incorrectly. I responded with my question on why couldn’t Worldsource pick up the phone? There’s really nothing to clarify. It’s very clear by Worldsource correspondence that they understand we’re talking about the Fidelity fund, that they call FID, and they use the account # for that fund. Why is Worldsource playing these stupid little games with me?
I also took this opportunity in my response to Natasa Morfesis to ask about the TFSA that Worldsource screwed up in 2017 and the retaliatory measures Worldsource took against me in early 2018, suddenly sending my mail to the wrong address.
That was on June 20, 2019. I’m still waiting for a response.
Actually, we all know that no response IS a response.
No response = fuck off!
Does anyone out there want to do business with a financial institution that tells you to fuck off?
I just want my money out of there so I can invest it better!
Give me my money!
Stop playing stupid little games.
Ending
Questrade advises me on July 16, 2019 that the transfer has come through from Worldsource Financial.
This time the transfer fee is $36.75.
Luckily, Questrade extended their offer that ended on June 30 to rebate transfer fees for people moving their money to them, so I’ll get that money back.
First I needed to prove it, and contacted Worldsource to get a statement showing that transfer fee. When I called Worldsource I was connected with a staff member fairly quickly, I’d say under a minute.
Take note Coast Capital! I hang up after 10 minutes of waiting around on your automated answering service. I hope you log your dropped calls!
Answering the phones is the only thing Worldsource Financial is speedy about. They sure don’t specialize in transferring funds or returning emails in a timely manner!
This guy must have been having an off day because he only played a little stupid with me. He emailed my statement about 5 minutes later so that part of the process was the least painful.
It took about 6 weeks until I finally got my money. How’s this all looking? After 2 years my $25,000 grew $1,100. Don’t forget the MER charged on this mutual fund, around $570/year.
The growth of my financial products are less important to me than the growing income they generate. Sure, I’d like my financial products to increase in value over time, and certainly not lose any money like the stocks I wish I hadn’t bought. Income is more important to me and that stinker Fidelity mutual fund just wasn’t meeting my financial goals.
I am not at all happy with Coast Capital and their unfortunate choice of partnering with Worldsource Financial.
Questrade
If you’re interested in becoming a DIY investor, check out Questrade. If you’d like to sign up, please use my “refer a friend” code 415632012426909. You will need to transfer in a minimum of $1,000 to open a Questrade account and make your first trade within the month and we will both receive $50 into our trading accounts to buy stocks. Yay! Free money!
Edited to add: After this post was published, I ran into another issue with Worldsource Financial. I usually receive a disbursement cheque the first week of each month from one of my mutual funds. In August, 2019, I waited and waited. The mailbox stayed empty.
In the third week of August I contacted my financial advisor and asked him to look into it.
The answer he got? Worldsource Financial was sure I was planning to transfer out the funds from that mutual fund that they held back on sending my monthly cheque!
Wow!
Without authorization from either me or my financial advisor, the incompetent buffoons at Worldsource Financial did this all on their own.
Published by Cheryl @ The Lifestyle Digs on July 18, 2019 and last update September 15, 2023 for link accuracy.
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So if my dad was charged 50,000 in DSC charges how much did he liquidate before his sudden death.
Hi DaNi. First off, I’m very sorry to hear about your father. This must be a very difficult time for you.
Sorry, I have no idea how much your father might have liquidated. The DSC is a back end charge, meaning there must have been a time limit that your father had to leave those funds alone after investing. He would have been charged a DSC if he cashed the funds out early. That does seem like a lot of money.
There’s a lot of unknown things here like if your dad had a will and an executor. If not, you have to go through the courts to have an estate administrator appointed to handle his debts and assets.
When my father passed, I had my lawyer look over the paperwork from my father’s lawyer and I hadn’t received a couple of things, mainly an accounting statement, and we had a couple of questions, so my lawyer helped me through that and going through the papers with me to ensure all was in order. I recommend you get a lawyer to assist, for your peace of mind. The executor should be able to get your dad’s banking statements and question that DSC, even if it takes your lawyer sending a letter demanding you be provided with these statements.
They are screening with me too
I had another problem wit Worldsource Financial a couple of months ago, acting without instructions. How can they make a decision without instructions from either me or my financial advisor? I’m deciding whether or not to report them to securities commission. But just having this post on the blog might be good enough for me!
My father has advanced dementia and was moved out of his home in 2022, into a long-term care home.
February & March 2022, I went into Coast Capital with the Enduring Power of Attorney to close his account which had less than $100 in it, and change his address for his RRIF accounts with Worldsource Financial. First visit, no-one in the branch that could help me, but copies of the documents were taken. Second visit I met with Jennifer Chan who closed out his account, added me as POA and changed his address. I left with the sense that everything was done – but I was wrong.
I was a little miffed when his 2Q statement from Worldsource Financial was sent to his home address (round trip takes about 1-1/2 hours). So I reached out to Jennifer, who seemed to recall our meeting and promised to look into it, but advised that we might have missed the time-line for his 3Q statement. No problem, again I thought the issue was being dealt with.
Needless to say my annoyance grew when his 2023 RIF payment, 2022 year-end statement and tax slip were mailed to his home address. So once again I called Jennifer, but this time she had the unfortunate task of advising me, that even with the EPOA, I cannot change the address on his investment account, nor if I had wanted to, would I be permitted to change the risk ratio on his investments. Full disclosure, I lost it with Jennifer, for which I apologize because I do not this she is the “buffoon” that makes this idiotic rules. Although I am a little perplexed that she wouldn’t have had this knowledge from the get-go.
So who makes these rules, and do they have the authority to ignore a person’s legal right to confer legal authority to a person(s) to act on their behalf for financial and legal matters even if they later become incapable?
So basically as long as he is alive and we don’t have a treatment that can reverse the effects of dementia, his financial statements/cheques will be mailed to the new owners? Sounds perfectly illogical to me. I wonder if intentionally sending personal and sensitive financial information to an incorrect address, would constitute some sort of privacy breech?
Obviously, the only solution is to have his mail re-directed from the Post Office. That’s right, the Federal Government recognizes the EPOA as my father’s authorization allowing me and/or my siblings to act on his behalf, but not Worldsource Financial.
Unfortunately, this power-tripping mentality isn’t just isolated to Coast Capital and Worldsource Financial. It has been a stumbling block with every financial institution that I have had the displeasure of dealing with in trying to simplify my father’s affairs, and caring out my duties as a Joint Executor for his late wife’s estate.
As his POA, CIBC will not let me cancel my father’s CIBC Costco credit card unless 1) I bring my dad into the branch so that they can access his ability to make decisions for himself, or 2) I provide them with a letter from his doctor. As far as I’m concerned, they can continue to mail zero balance statements until the end of time.
Vancity Credit Union wouldn’t accept the POA as an original document because it didn’t have “document blue corners” on it. So I took them into the law firm that had drawn it up who confirmed they were in fact originals and imparted a few thoughts on the arbitrary practices of financial institutions and how hard and frustrating they make it for people already going through a difficult time. Anyway, the documents now have the desired “blue corners” that somehow transformed the original EPOA into well, an original EPOA with blue corners.
I’m also prepared to have the same change of address issue with Vancity’s associated investment company as their statements/cheques are also being mailed to his home address, even when Vancity’s statements are being re-directed.
Hmmm, should we be asking ourselves if we want the people responsible for these idiotic, illogical rules looking after your money? Maybe!
My experiences dealing with the financial world is commonsense doesn’t seem very common these days.
Hello Debbie. Thank you for stopping by to share your story of how frustrating it is to deal with Worldsource, Coast Capital, and other banks.
I’m sorry to hear about your father. I understand what you’re going through. My mother had Alzheimer’s Disease and a few years after she passed, my father had vascular dementia, brought on by small strokes. It’s tough enough on families dealing with this horrible disease. We don’t need banks making our lives even more difficult.
What is is with Worldsource Financial and the inability to change addresses. I don’t understand this all.
What are you going to do? Pay Canada Post’s exorbitant fees to forward mail indefinitely?
Have you looked into filing a complaint with the BC Securities Commission because Worldsource Financial refuses to change your father’s address? More on how to file a complaint: https://www.bcsc.bc.ca/about/report-a-concern
To file a complaint against a credit union in BC: https://www.bcfsa.ca/public-protection/report-concern/file-credit-union-complaint
Your complaint is going to be relatively minor. You just want to change your father’s mailing address. Financial institutions don’t like getting complaints filed against them. And then it makes them look really stupid for something that should be a minor issue to fix.
If all else fails, you might consider writing to Anne Drewal at Global BC News and see if she’ll look into why Worldsource and Coast Capital are being stubborn about changing an address. Financial institutions hate that kind of publicity because, again, it makes them look really stupid.
How tough can it be to change an address?
And I love what you’re doing with CIBC. Let them waste their money sending zero balance statements forever. I’m doing the same thing with Envision’s Mastercard. Not due to an address change, but they can keep sending monthly statements forever too. I’m not using their card again. At some point you have to say, I’ve done everything I can to convince them. It’s time to give up.
Common sense has gone out the window with these financial institutions.
You’re lucky you didn’t stay with World Source, worst company I’ve ever dealt with.
They have now moved all the funds to other Financial Institutions, l found out because l had called and asked about transferring my funds and they were supposed to get back to me, that never happened. So l asked my other Bank to transfer the funds for me, and guess what they couldn’t because Worldsource didn’t know what institution they had been sent to!! So l got the message through her that l have to wait till l get a statement. That was almost 2 months ago and nothing yet. As soon as I do it’s getting moved, and I’m sure I’ll get charged for it.
Sorry to hear about your troubles with Canada’s worst “investment” firm – Worldsource. Looks like they’re playing stupid little games with you too. This is how they retaliate against clients moving their money out. And yes you’ll definitely be dinged for moving your money out. Hopefully you’re moving it to Questrade or somewhere else that will cover those fees. Worldsource sucks!