Canadians spent the better part of three years losing their minds over bread prices. There were parliamentary hearings. There were investigative reports. Grocery executives had to sit in front of cameras and explain themselves.
Fair enough. The markup on a loaf of bread is a reasonable thing to get angry about.
But here is something that flew under the radar while everyone was yelling about groceries: the Big 5 banks posted record profits, paid their CEOs tens of millions of dollars each, and continued to pay you somewhere around half a percent on your savings.
We pulled the 2025 proxy circulars. We looked at what these CEOs actually took home. Then we put those numbers next to the savings rates their banks offer a regular person with a regular account.
The Scoreboard
| Bank | CEO | Total Compensation (2025) | Standard Savings Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| RBC | Dave McKay | $23.76 million | ~0.55% |
| CIBC | Victor Dodig | $17.18 million | 0.30% to 0.60% |
| BMO | Darryl White | $17.04 million | ~0.50% |
| Scotiabank | Scott Thomson | $13.24 million | 0% to 2.20%* |
| TD | Raymond Chun | ~$12 million (target) | 0.45% to 0.50% |
All compensation figures are sourced from each bank's 2026 proxy circular filings (fiscal year ended October 31, 2025). Savings rates reflect standard, non-promotional high-interest savings account rates as publicly posted by each institution at the time of writing and are subject to change.
About the Scotiabank range: yes, 2.20% exists on their rate sheet. It requires a premium account tier and a significant minimum balance. For a typical customer with a typical balance, the effective rate collapses back to roughly 0.50%, same neighbourhood as the rest. Credit where credit is due for posting a higher ceiling, but the floor is literally zero.
Your $10,000 vs. Dave McKay's Tuesday
Here is a simple exercise.
Say you have $10,000 sitting in an RBC savings account at 0.55%. That's a solid emergency fund. You did the responsible thing. You saved it.
Over an entire year, that $10,000 generates $55 in interest.
Dave McKay's $23.76 million in annual compensation works out to about $65,096 per day. Every day.
Your emergency fund would need to sit in that account for roughly 1,183 years to earn enough interest to cover a single day of his compensation.
The biohackers haven't figured out how to get us living that long yet, so don't hold your breath.
How the Spread Works
The whole mechanism is publicly documented and totally legal.
You deposit money in a savings account. The bank pays you 0.55% for the privilege of holding it. Then the bank takes that money and lends it out as mortgages at 5% to 6%, car loans at 6% to 13%, and credit cards at 19.99% or higher.
The gap between what the bank pays you and what the bank charges borrowers is called the net interest margin. That margin, multiplied across millions of customers and hundreds of billions in deposits, is a huge part of how these banks generate profit. RBC alone reported $20.4 billion in earnings in fiscal 2025.
Those profits go to shareholders first. Executive compensation reflects that priority. You, the depositor, are the raw material in this equation.
And then the bank charges you $4 to $30 per month to keep your chequing account open.
So you are paying the bank a monthly fee to hold your money, which the bank then lends out at a massive markup, and in return you get $55 per year on your savings and the privilege of having a debit card.
The Part Where We Are Honest About Credit Unions
Here is where a lot of content in this space gets lazy. The standard script goes something like: banks are bad, credit unions are good, move your money, problem solved.
That's too simple, and being too simple makes it easy to dismiss.
The truth is that plenty of credit unions in Canada offer savings rates in the same general range as the Big 5. If you walk into a smaller credit union expecting 3% on a basic savings account just because they have a different logo on the door, you might be disappointed. Rates vary. Some credit unions are competitive on savings, others are not, and those numbers shift regularly.
So if the rate on a standard savings account is sometimes similar, what is the actual point?
The point is structural. And the structural difference is the whole argument.
The Structural Difference, Explained Without Buzzwords
A Big 5 bank is a publicly traded corporation. It has a legal duty to maximise returns for external shareholders. Every decision the bank makes runs through that filter. Your deposits are a cheap source of capital. Your fees are a revenue line. Your relationship with the bank exists to generate profit that flows outward, to people who own stock.
A credit union is a financial cooperative. When you open an account, you become a member and a partial owner. There are no external shareholders extracting a margin. If the credit union generates a surplus, that money goes back into the membership through better rates on certain products, lower fees, community investment, or direct dividends paid to members.
This is a practical difference. It shows up in real numbers, real policies, and real account terms.
Fees. Many credit unions offer free or low-cost chequing as a standard product, not a promotional teaser. The Big 5 charge $4 to $30 per month for chequing accounts that credit unions routinely offer for zero.
Lending rates. Without a shareholder margin to protect, credit unions frequently price mortgages and personal loans more aggressively. The spread isn't always dramatic, but over a 25-year mortgage, a quarter-point difference is thousands of dollars.
Governance. You can vote on who sits on the board. The credit union is legally required to serve its members' financial interests. There is no quarterly earnings call. There is no institutional investor pushing for higher margins at your expense.
Dividends. Some credit unions issue year-end patronage dividends directly to their members. That money comes from the surplus the institution generated using your deposits. Instead of routing it to Bay Street, it comes back to you.
The Honest Case
The case for a credit union comes down to something other than "they always pay more on savings." Sometimes they do, sometimes they are close to the Big 5, and sometimes one specific product at a big bank might be more competitive on a given day.
The case is simpler than that: a credit union's legal obligation runs to you. A bank's legal obligation runs to its shareholders. Those two incentive structures produce different decisions, year after year, across every product, every fee schedule, and every policy.
The $23.76 million paycheque is the system working exactly the way it was designed. The question is whether that system is working for you.
What $490 a Year Looks Like
Run the numbers on your own accounts. Take a $20,000 emergency fund.
At 0.55% (standard Big 5 rate), that earns $110 per year.
At 3.00% (a rate you can find at competitive credit unions), that earns $600 per year.
That's a $490 difference. Per year. For doing absolutely nothing differently except choosing a different institution. Over five years, the gap compounds into real money.
And that's just the savings account. Factor in eliminated monthly chequing fees ($200 or more per year at the Big 5), better lending rates on a mortgage, and a potential year-end dividend, and the annual value of switching starts to stack up quickly.
What to Do With This Information
Check your current savings rate. You can find it on your last statement or your online banking dashboard. Then compare it to what credit unions in your province are offering right now.
You can browse and compare rates across Canadian credit unions at CreditUnionDirectory.ca. Our HISA leaderboard tracks the best high-interest savings account rates from member-owned cooperatives, updated regularly.
If you are holding a savings TFSA or RRSP at a Big 5 bank, check those rates too. The RRSP vs. TFSA calculator on our site can help you figure out where your registered savings should live once you have found them a better home.
The Big 5 are doing what they are designed to do. Their CEOs are being paid what the system says they should be paid. None of that is going to change.
Where you keep your money, though, is entirely up to you.
Nothing on this page is financial advice. Savings rates change frequently and the rates cited in this article reflect what each bank was publicly posting at the time of writing (April 2026). Check current rates before making any decisions. All CEO compensation data sourced from each bank's proxy circular filings for fiscal year 2025 (ending October 31, 2025).
Sources
RBC 2026 Management Proxy Circular (PDF)
CIBC 2026 Management Proxy Circular (PDF)
Globe and Mail: CEOs of most of Canada's big banks got pay increases in 2025
TD Bank Group 2025 Management Proxy Circular
Bank savings rates sourced from each institution's publicly posted rate schedules at time of writing
