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Way back in the late ’90s, a unfamiliar Dutchman, Frederik de Groot, showed up on TV making ardent pleas directly to Canadians to save money.

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RBC has attracted the most attention with its new fees, including a charge for pre-authorized and non-scheduled credit card, loan and mortgage payments under certain circumstances.





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ING Direct was the first wave in an ocean of new institutions that promised to do things differently; or, rather, to return to the way things were done, which was, for those old enough to remember, about loaning your money to the bank to safeguard — to prevent the cash under your mattress from disintegrating into ash if the house went up in flames.

Grateful for this loan, from which the bank derived much profit from lending to others at high interest rates, it paid you a healthy amount of interest. In 1981, for example, the prime lending rate topped out at 22.75 per cent, with interest rates on ordinary savings accounts rising in lockstep. The bank certainly didn’t charge a fee to access your own money, as became common practice in the nineties.