How We Rate Bank Accounts: The MoneyMint Score

What the Banking Rating Is

The score rates the account, not the bank. Readers choose accounts, not institutions, and an institution-level rating would have to lean on customer-service impressions we cannot verify. So a bank with an excellent chequing account and a poor savings account gets two different scores, which is the honest result.

Chequing accounts and savings accounts are scored on different factors and ranked separately. One formula cannot serve both: a chequing account paying no interest is normal, and a savings account paying no interest is not. A savings account is never presented as beating a chequing account, or the reverse.

The scale is absolute rather than relative. A score of 80 means the same thing in both groups, and no account is guaranteed a top rating simply for leading its category. As of this writing the best savings account in Canada reaches 4 stars, not 5 — because the highest rate available with no conditions attached is 2.40%, and nothing on the market clears that by enough to earn more. That ceiling is information, not a rounding error. Our credit card score works differently: cards are graded within eight peer groups, so the leader of each group scores 4.8.

Stars are the score divided by 20, rounded to the nearest half star.

The Factors

Chequing accounts are scored on six factors:

Savings accounts are scored on five:

How Each Factor Is Calculated

Real Annual Cost (Chequing, 35%)

Two numbers are compared: the monthly fee multiplied by twelve, and the interest given up on the balance required to waive that fee. The lower of the two is the account’s real annual cost, because you would rationally choose whichever is cheaper.

A fee waived on a $4,000 balance is not a free account. That $4,000 earns nothing sitting in chequing, and at 2.40% elsewhere it would earn $96 a year. So a $17.95 monthly fee waived at $4,000 scores as $96, not $0 and not $215.40. Scoring a waiver as free would rank an account that demands $4,000 above one that costs nothing and requires nothing, which is the wrong answer.

$0 scores 100 and $300 a year scores 0. You can run any account’s figures with our minimum balance calculator.

Transactions (Chequing, 25%)

Unlimited transactions score 100. Otherwise we take a reference profile of 30 transactions a month, calculate the shortfall against what the account includes, multiply by the per-transaction fee, and annualise it. A $150 annual shortfall scores 0.

The 30-a-month figure is a fixed reference, the same way our credit card score uses a fixed $2,050 monthly spending basket. If you write eight cheques a month, a limited-transaction account will suit you better than its score suggests.

Interest Paid (Chequing, 10%) and Regular Rate (Savings, 45%)

Both are scored against the same 2.40% benchmark described below. Savings rates are read at a $10,000 reference balance, because most savings accounts are tiered and quoting the rate on a million dollars would flatter them.

Rates That Come With a Condition

Many accounts advertise a headline rate that requires something of you. We do not ignore those rates, and we do not score them as though the condition were free. Instead the uplift above the base rate earns partial credit, on a fixed ladder:

The same ladder applies to fees. A monthly fee reduced because you hold other products at that bank is credited at half its value, so a fee that drops from $16.95 to $4.00 scores as $10.47. A rebate you have to buy three other products to earn is a real discount, but it is not the same as a cheap account.

Promotional Rate (Savings, 15%)

We take the gap between the promotional rate and the account’s own regular rate, multiply by the promotion’s length, and annualise it. A promotion worth 1.50 percentage points across a full year scores 100. A promotion with no published end date is treated as ongoing and scored as a regular rate instead.

Welcome Bonus (Both, 10%)

The cash value of the offer, against $800 for a full score. Only cash counts — a promotional interest rate is scored in its own factor and is never counted twice. Where a bank advertises an amount “up to” a figure without publishing the tiers behind it, we do not score the bonus at all, and the account carries no rating until the tiers are published.

Access (Chequing, 10%)

Branch network 30, ATM breadth 30, free Interac e-Transfers 25, foreign-currency costs 15. This is the most judgment-dependent factor on the page, which is why it carries only 10%.

Access and Liquidity (Savings, 15%)

Whether you can move money out freely. Notice periods, per-withdrawal fees, monthly withdrawal limits, and whether the account can send an e-Transfer or pay a bill at all. Several savings accounts with competitive rates charge $5 every time you take money out, and that belongs in the score.

Deposit Protection (Chequing, 10%)

100 if the institution is a CDIC member in its own right, 60 if it is not a bank but holds your balance at a CDIC member, 0 if neither applies. Several popular accounts fall into the middle category, which is not a warning — but it is a difference worth knowing, and it is easy to miss on a marketing page.

The 2.40% Comparison Rate

One number does three jobs in this formula: it sets the opportunity cost in the real annual cost calculation, it is the benchmark for savings rates, and it is the benchmark for interest paid on chequing balances.

That number is the highest rate available with no conditions attached among the savings accounts we track — today 2.40%, from the Canadian Tire High Interest Savings Account. It is deliberately a rate you could actually go and get, at a product ranked on this site, rather than a figure we invented. Promotional rates are excluded because they run for three to five months and using one would overstate every calculation across a full year.

When the best unconditional rate on the market moves, this number moves with it and every score is recalculated. That is a feature of scoring savings honestly: the answer genuinely does change when rates change.

What We Don’t Rate

Some accounts carry no score. That is not an oversight and it is not a verdict on the account.

We rate an account only when every input to the formula can be read from a primary source — the bank’s own rate page or product documentation. Several Canadian banks publish their regular interest rates as a dynamic table that does not resolve to a figure we can quote, or advertise a bonus “up to” an amount without publishing the tiers. Rather than estimate a number and present it as a rating, we leave the account unrated and say which input is missing.

The same rule already governs our bank account rates tracker, which says “tiered” rather than quoting a rate it cannot verify. An unrated account is one where we would rather show you nothing than show you a guess.

Data Sources & Updates

Fees, rates, transaction limits and bonus terms come from each bank’s own pages and rate tables. Every account review carries the date its figures were last checked, and scores reflect the account’s terms as of that date.

Savings scores move whenever a rate moves, which makes them less stable than credit card scores. Rates are re-read on a weekly sweep, and when one changes, the review, the rates tracker and the score are all regenerated in the same pass so the site does not contradict itself.

MoneyMint may earn a commission when a reader opens an account through some of our links. Commission has no input into the formula, no weighting in the score, and no bearing on where an account ranks. Several accounts near the top of our rankings pay us nothing.