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 Five 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 and looked at what these CEOs took home. Then we put those numbers next to the savings rates their banks offer a regular person.
Big Five CEO Pay vs. Standard Savings Rates
| 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 | $14.57 million | 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 0.50%, same neighbourhood as the rest. The higher ceiling is real, but the floor is zero.
Your $10,000 vs. Dave McKay's Tuesday
Say you have $10,000 sitting in an RBC savings account at 0.55%. You've done the responsible thing and built a solid emergency fund.
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.
Your emergency fund would need to sit in that account for 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 mechanism is publicly documented and 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, and executive compensation reflects that priority. As a depositor, you're 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.
Where Credit Unions Land on Savings Rates
A lot of content in this space gets lazy: banks are bad, credit unions are good, move your money, problem solved.
The cliché is too tidy to be useful.
Plenty of credit unions in Canada offer savings rates in the same general range as the Big Five. If you walk into a smaller credit union expecting 3% on a basic savings account just because the logo on the door is different, you might be disappointed. Rates vary, and the competitive picture shifts across institutions.
So if the rate on a standard savings account is sometimes similar, what is the point?
How Credit Union Ownership Changes the Numbers
A Big Five bank is a publicly traded corporation with a legal duty to maximise returns for external shareholders. Every decision runs through that filter, treating your deposits as cheap capital, your fees as a revenue line, and your relationship as a profit-generating asset for the 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.
The difference shows up in real numbers, policies, and account terms.
Fees. Many credit unions offer free or low-cost chequing as their standard product, compared with the $4 to $30 per month the Big Five typically charge. Specifics vary across credit unions, so check the institution before switching.
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, and the credit union is legally required to serve its members' financial interests. There's no quarterly earnings call, and no institutional investor pushing for higher margins at your expense.
Dividends. Some credit unions issue year-end patronage dividends directly to their members, drawn from the surplus generated using member deposits. The money returns to members rather than flowing to Bay Street shareholders.
Why a Credit Union, Specifically
The case for a credit union goes beyond a savings-rate comparison. The rate landscape is mixed: some credit unions beat the Big Five, others are close, and some big-bank products will outprice them on a given day.
At the structural level, a credit union's legal obligation runs to its members, while a bank's runs to its shareholders. Those incentive structures produce different decisions across every product, fee, and policy, year after year.
The $23.76 million paycheque is the system working as designed. Whether you're benefiting from that design is a separate question.
What $490 a Year Looks Like
Run the numbers on your own accounts. Take a $20,000 emergency fund.
At 0.55% (standard Big Five 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 nothing more than switching institutions. Over five years, the gap compounds into real money.
That's the savings account alone. Factor in eliminated chequing fees ($50 to $360 per year at the Big Five depending on the account), better lending rates on a mortgage, and a potential year-end dividend, and the annual value compounds 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 Five 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 Five will keep doing what they're designed to do, and the CEO compensation that follows isn't changing soon either.
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) BMO: Notice of Annual Meeting and Management Proxy Circular (April 2026, PDF) Scotiabank: 194th Management Proxy Circular (PDF) TD Bank Group: 2026 Management Proxy Circular (PDF) Globe and Mail: CEOs of Most of Canada's Big Banks Got Pay Increases in 2025
