Where is the ‘E’ in E*Trade?

I love the idea of trading online. It sure beats the old days when I had to call into the broker to place an order for me. It’s also a lot less expensive now and the information resources to help me make decisions about my financial assets are extremely useful.

I used several discount brokerages over the past ten years. Most of them have been from Canadian banks. Just a year ago, I took advice from my mom (who’s an avid online trader) and opened an E*Trade account to trade equities. I’ve been using online banking products for several years now and thought it should be a cinch to perform my usual saving duties with E*Trade’s corpus of financial tools.

Now I think a little differently. By it’s name, I presumed that I would be able to do the vast majority of my financial tasks electronically. Simple things like applying for an RRSP account and making automatic tranfers from my chequing account from another bank to my E*Trade savings and trading accounts. To my surprise, such tasks are not open to customers to be done electronically – at least not for me anyway. To open an RRSP account, I have to download a PDF form, fill it out, and then mail it…yes ’snail’ mail it (with stamp and envelope) back to E*Trade’s offices in Toronto. The same goes if I want to set up a regular automatic funds transfer. How slow and primitive. I understand the security concerns, but by the time the application is received an processed on the other side of the country, the price of the financial equities I desire to invest in have long changed (Many people have complained on other forums about E*Trade’s snail pace when it comes to setting up accounts).

Why can they offer an electronic application that is sent immediately for processing at a click of a button? Wouldn’t it be better for their clients? Wouldn’t it save data entry costs on their end too? I understand that they need a signature on documents for legal and security reasons, but couldn’t a electronic signature of some sort help address that issue? Other financial institutions allow their clients to quickly set up regular automatic transfers quickly online, which can E*Trade?

Not only do they make clients go through the arduous task to printing, filling out, and sending a paper copy of an application form for fund transfers, they have the gall to call the paper form: “Quick Transfer Authorization Form”; there isn’t anything “quick” about it. I’m now guessing that if I want to change the amount of my regular transfers, I’ll probably have to go through the paper process all over again (taking up to two weeks to make a simple change).

They make the process potentially much slower by printing the wrong mailing address on the authorization form. On the top left corner, the address written is “60 Yonge Street…”, when the destination address for application forms is “30 Adelaide Street E…”. I’m sure they get a lot of phone calls about lost application forms.

E*Trade needs to make simple banking tasks truly simple by making the process of submitting forms as electronic as possible. No one wants to waste time licking stamps. People want efficient and effective processes that get them to their goal. In this case, that means allowing clients perform simple tasks like setting up a regular automatic fund transfer using electronic means. It also, means making sure the right delivery address is supplied with every form. Not only will these changes make clients happy, it’s improve the bottom line on E*Trade’s end my removing costs related to data processing and application inquiries to their phone board.