Buying, Selling and Commissions

How clients place a trade

Clients phone their order instructions in to the Special Services department at 604-643-2774 or toll free at 1-800-665-6669. We will calculate the net yield for you after adding the commission.

• Sell Orders
  • Clients must be able to deliver bonds for settlement within two business days for bonds with less than three years maturity or three business days for longer term bonds. Securities must be in ‘street form’ (signed certificate or signed Power of Attorney attached).
• Buy Orders
  • For new clients, the money must be received by National Bank Financial before the order is placed. For existing clients, the money must be received by our office within three days of the trade date. T-Bills are next-day settlement unless other arrangements have been made otherwise.
• Trading strips
  • For delivery against payment orders, clients must quote the CUSIP number along with the description of the Strip when placing sell order. Description includes: issuer, maturity date, and maturity value.

Receiving fixed-income quotes

Fixed-Income rate sheets can be facsimiled to your firm on a daily/weekly basis. These rate sheets include Federal & Provincial Government Bond quotes, Corporate Bond quotes, Strip Bond offerings (Federal, Provincial and US pay), Mortgage-Backed Securities offerings, Eurobonds and Yankee Offerings and Foreign Bond quotes. Daily Treasury Bill yields can be received by calling the Department. These lists give you a sample of some of the prices/yields available that day. These prices are not fixed.

There are six people in the department who can help clients place orders. If the client is purchasing a selection of bonds with different maturity dates, we can weigh the commission towards the longer maturities ensuring that the net yields on the short-term bonds remain competitive.

How Commissions Affect Clients’ Yields

The following are examples of how commissions affect clients’ net yields:

Commissions Charged to Clients Including Referral Fees

We calculate the net yields for the client. With multiple purchases we can weigh the commission so that it results in competitive yields throughout the range of maturities.