Equitable Bank


Equitable Bank is a Canadian bank which primarily provides residential and commercial real estate lending services, as well as personal banking through its direct banking brand EQ Bank. The bank was founded in 1970 as The Equitable Trust Company and became a Schedule I Bank offering savings products in 2013. It is now Canada’s ninth largest independent bank, with more than $25 billion in assets under management. As of June 2017, the bank had over $10 billion in deposits. Equitable Bank is a member of the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Mortgage lender

Equitable Bank provides mortgages, commercial lending services and deposit services. It is headquartered in Toronto with offices in Calgary, Halifax, Montreal and Vancouver. Equitable Bank is one of nine Schedule I banks listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange; it is listed through its parent company Equitable Group.

EQ Bank

Equitable Bank launched a direct banking operation branded as EQ Bank on January 14, 2016. As a completely online banking service, EQ Bank has no branch locations and also does not provide debit cards, credit cards, or cheques to its consumers.
As of July 2018, the EQ Bank division alone had over $2 billion in deposits and 60,000 customers.

Products and services

The primary product offered by EQ Bank is the Savings Plus Account, a high-interest and no-fee savings account. At launch the bank attracted customers with an interest rate of 3.0%. The rate was lowered on April 18, just 96 days later, to 2.25%. The rate was lowered again to 2.0% on August 25, 2016. In May 2017 the rate was raised to 2.3%. From January to March 2020, the rate peaked at 2.45% before being reduced to 2.0% in response to reductions of the Bank of Canada interest rates due to the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
EQ Bank began offering guaranteed investment certificates in May 2018, and launched an international money transfer service in partnership with TransferWise in 2019. All of EQ Bank's products require a Savings Plus Account.