My employer shifted away from Sunlife Canada a few years ago. I had a modest chunk in there slowly accreting, but recently had another look at the MERs and other fees and got offended enough to do the paperwork required to transfer it out of Sunlife and into someone who isn't SCREWING me over with high rates to lag the market.
So far it's been well over 2 months, and they have done everything in their power to hold onto my money and keep charging me their rates as long as possible. On TWO occasions they have held up the transfer and mailed me a letter requiring my action to proceed. When I contact them the action required is to say that yes, I do in fact want to make the transfer.
And it still hasn't happened yet. I'm going through another round of being nice and asking them to transfer me MY money. It's only about $5K, so I haven't gotten too excited yet.
Long story short, go ahead and take the employer 5% match, despite all the above it's still worth it. But Sunlife appears to be evil.
