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TD Bank is a great resource for US expatriates and anyone living in Canada who has a nontrivial amount of US dollars. Some people have asked me specifics about accounts at TD Bank, so I decided to write this post.

I have the following accounts with TD:

TD Canada

• U.S. Daily Interest Chequing Account

TD US

• TD Convenience Checking
• TD Preferred Savings with Rate Bump

The Details

TD Canada

Two US currency account choices are available:

• The U.S. Daily Interest Chequing Account officially has no minimum balance, but a minimum balance of $1500 is needed to avoid being charged a fee of $1.25 per transaction.


• The Borderless Plan requires a $3000 minimum balance to avoid monthly fee. Additional perks include free bank drafts and better exchange rates, but the exchange rates are still very bad compared to those of the currency exchange companies described in my other post, so I don't care about the better exchange rates.

TD US

• I like TD Convenience Checking because only a $100 minimum balance is needed to waive the monthly fee. But here are other checking account options https://www.td.com/us/en/personal-banking/checking-accounts/


• After moving to Canada, I opened up a TD Preferred Savings account with Rate Bump. I had intended to convert most of the funds from the sales of my US real estate to buy real estate here in Toronto soon and have extra Canadian cash for local investment opportunities that might come up. However, due to some very very long bank holds on some of the proceeds from the sales, I was able to convert only about half of what I had planned to on July 19, the last time the CAD/USD exchange rate went above 1.32, my current threshold for converting. The rest of the funds did not clear until the end of July, after the CAD/USD rate had gone down, and now I have been waiting for a month with a large chunk of cash sitting in my US currency account at TD Canada earning no interest. Actually my plans for additional currency conversion are now up in the air, as I am now no longer planning to invest as much in real estate or buy in Toronto. More on that in a future post. But I soon realized I needed an interest-bearing place to hold cash that I could quickly convert to Canadian dollars if the exchange rate becomes favorable enough. So here are the details:
  
  
  • $20,000 minimum balance to waive monthly fee
  • With Rate Bump, the interest rate ranges from 1.15% starting at $20,000 to 1.75% from $250,000 to under $10 million
  • Qualify for Rate Bump when you link an eligible TD Bank mortgage, home equity, credit card or active personal or small business checking account.
    • An "active checking account" must have three customer-initiated deposit, withdrawal, payment or transfer transactions each month to qualify for the rate bump during the following month. For me, this is a little too much hassle to have to deal with each month.
    • Fortunately you can also link a TD US credit card, and there are no activity requirements on the credit card, only that it is open. So I linked the TD Cash Credit Card that I have had for a while.

Using TD for Currency Exchange

As discussed in my post on currency exchange, the following is the process:

1. move your US dollars into your US TD bank account.


2. move your funds from US TD Bank account to Canada TD Bank US currency account for free by calling the toll-free Cross Border Banking number 877-700-2913. You can transfer up to $100,000 per calendar day. Usually orders placed before 2 PM eastern time are processed the same day, and those placed after 2 PM eastern are processed the next business day. You will be charged wire transfer fees, but they will be reversed the same day or the next business day.


3. have Knightsbridge or the currency exchange company of your choice deduct the US funds from your Canada TD Bank US currency account and deposit Canadian dollars into the Canadian account of your choice.