- What if the Good Life Requires Giving Up Some Freedom? - September 15, 2026
- What Climbing Grouse Mountain Taught Me About Financial Freedom - August 18, 2026
- My Apartment Gave Me Something That Money Can’t Buy - August 4, 2026
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a lot of financial companies in Canada eyeing your RRSP like a starving hyena these days.
It’s a trend initially started by WealthSimple, a Toronto-based FinTech company that got it’s start as a robo-advisor, and it’s been so successful that now other companies are doing it too.
The offer is simple: Transfer your account into our company and we will pay you cash money as a percentage of the assets transferred. WealthSimple is currently offering a 2% cash-back for RRSP transfers, and 1% for everything else. Questrade, the brokerage we use, is now running a promotion where you get 3% for the first $10,000 of transfer-in, and then 1.5% for anything above that. Even major banks are getting involved, with TD and Scotiabank offering cash-back bonuses for transfers to select clients.
These are all very tempting offers, but let’s stop for a minute to ask ourselves, does it make sense to move your money in?
The Hazards of Brokerage Hopping
I’ve gotten a few emails asking if it makes sense to brokerage-hop, meaning moving your investment accounts around to take advantage of these promotional offers, then transferring out to take advantage of the next offer.
Admittedly, I constantly move my cash around between different banks to take advantage of promotional interest rate offers. It’s a process I like to call HISA-hopping, and I wrote an article about it here.
Here’s the thing. Moving your cash into a HISA to take advantage of a promotional interest rate is pretty easy. All you have to do is open an account and transfer your cash in. As long as the bank is covered by CDIC, which insures your deposits up to $100k, your risk is basically zero as long as you stay underneath that coverage limit. So, you may as well just keep moving any uninvested cash into whatever bank is offering the highest promotional savings rate. You don’t have to lock up your money, you can withdraw at any time, and you aren’t taking on any risk since they’re all backed by the same regulatory framework.
Brokerage-hopping is a little different.
I’ve now transferred accounts between brokerages 3 times, and every time, it’s a lot of paperwork. It takes weeks for the transfers to go through, and come tax time you’ll have to deal with twice the amount of tax forms because they’ll be split between the two companies.
So moving between brokerages isn’t nearly as simple as a savings account. There is work involved, so you should be aware of that before you dive in.
Another thing you need you need to be aware of is that you don’t get the money right away. In both WealthSimple and Questrade’s cases, your cash-back is paid out over the course of 24 months, meaning you need to keep your money with them for 2 years to get your full reward.
This is to prevent people from moving their money into the platform, collecting their reward, and then moving it right back out. They want you to stay long-term customers, which is totally in their right, but you should be aware that if you take advantage of this offer, you should expect to stay with them for some time.
None of this is to say that you shouldn’t do it. A 1-3% return on your portfolio is pretty sweet, and if you were thinking of transferring over your accounts but haven’t gotten around to it, now is the time to do it.
Your Money Deserves a Good Home
So what do we think about these fintech disrupter brokerages that are offering these incentives? Personally, I think they’re great!
Questrade is the brokerage that we’ve been using for years, and the bulk of our net worth (>$2M) is invested on their platform. We’ve been such happy clients of theirs that we promote them in our Investment Workshop, and will continue to do so.
They’ve also recently changed their commission structure to $0 per trade. Previously, buying was free and selling cost money, but now both buying and selling is free, so they are now a commission-free brokerage!
WealthSimple is also a company I’ve used in the past, and have been impressed with. WealthSimple started off as a robo-advisor, but now they’ve developed their self-directed investing side of their business into a mature offering in its own right, complete with $0 commissions and USD trading.
Both companies are protected by the Canadian Investor Protection Fund (CIPF) that protects you from the brokerage company going bankrupt, same as the Big 6 banks, so no worries there. And both companies will reimburse your transfer fees, so even if your outgoing bank charges you, you will get your money back.
In short, both companies would be excellent homes for your portfolio, especially if you’re currently using a brokerage that makes you *gasp* pay a commission to trade.
No Time Like The Present
If you’re considering moving your accounts over to Questrade (which I highly recommend), just know that the 3% cash-back promo is only running until Feb 28, 2025, so if you’re going to do it you should start now.
Note that the Feb 28 deadline is for opening the account and submitting your transfer paperwork. The actual transfer will take a week or two to actually go through, but as long as you started the process before Feb 28, your bonus will be locked in.
And if click this offer link, you’ll be eligible for an additional $50 cash-back to your account, because who doesn’t like free money! Plus, your generous click helps us keep this site free, so it’s greatly appreciated.
All details of their cash-back offer can be found here.
And if you’re interested in WealthSimple, be sure to check out their promo page here.
That’s it! Happy Transferring everyone!
Hi there. Thanks for stopping by. We use affiliate links to keep this site free, so if you believe in what we're trying to do here, consider supporting us by clicking! Thx ;)
Build a Portfolio Like Ours: Check out our FREE Investment Workshop!
Travel the World: Get flexible worldwide coverage for only $45.08 USD/month with SafetyWing Nomad Insurance
Multi-currency Travel Card: Get a multi-currency debit card when travelling to minimize forex fees! Read our review here, or Click here to get started!
Travel for Free with Home Exchange: Read Our Review or Click here to get started. Please use sponsor code kristy-d61e2 to get 250 bonus points (100 on completing home profile + 150 after first stay)!
I’ve taken advantage of the WealthSimple offer and my husband has taken advantage of the Questrade one. I think they’re great deals 🙂 Entire process took probably <30mins or so? The ROI on that time spent is insane!
I know, right? Another example of how money makes money 🙂
Thanks for this post! It’s really reassuring to get your take on these brokerage promotions. My husband and I just began the process of transferring our investment accounts to take advantage of these promos, after running the numbers and seeing that the cash rewards would be too good to pass up. It’s a bit intimidating though! We’ve never done this kind of account transfer before.
Regarding tax information, do you know how to access tax slips once the old brokerage accounts have been closed down? Our current brokerages have minimum account balances and fees, so we don’t want to keep the accounts open until 2025 tax slips are available.
It’s a lot of paperwork, but it’ll be worth it. You don’t have to keep your accounts open to receive tax slips, your old brokerage is required to generate the T3/T5 slips if you made more than $100 with them. They will report the amounts to the CRA, and you’ll be able to import them into your tax software using the “Auto-fill” feature.
Instead of jumping from one HISA to another constantly, why not just put the cash in a money market or ultra-short bond fund inside the brokerage? A HISA is never going to give you more than that, and may give you less once they start playing the game of cutting the rate, or failing to raise it when the market rate goes up, and hoping the rube customers don’t notice (at least here in the USA that is what they do). Not financial advice of course, this is just what I personally do!
There’s usually a promotional offer that pays more than a money market ETF, but if not, then money market is where that cash goes.
What do you do when your promotional offers run out on all your “HISA hopping” savings accounts?
For example, I just opened a Tangerine savings account (thanks MR for the Orange Key!). It has a rate of 4.5% for 5 months, then goes to the regular rate of .3%. So in July, I might open another HISA at Simplii for 3.9% for 5 months, which is their current promotional offer; I haven’t looked into EQ Bank yet. So I likely will have 3 x 5 months = 15 months of pretty high interest to park my funds that I want quick access to.
But at some point, i.e. likely in 15 months, I will run out of promotional offers in my circle of HISAs. Do I have to actually close my savings account when I run out of the promotional offer, then maybe 10 months later, open an entirely new HISA at the first bank, Tangerine in my case? Will banks let you do this?
“Previously, buying was free and selling cost money, but now both buying and selling is free, so they are now a commission-free brokerage!”
I don’t know about you but unless I was buying an ETF with Questrade, I had to spend $5 to buy until this recently announced change.
Correct, previously buying an ETF was free, but selling was not. I’m not sure what the commission was for individual stocks, but now EVERYTHING is free. Woo!
It’s NOT free, the way both Questrade and Wealthsimple make money on buys/sells is that the price you buy/sell at is slightly different then what Questrade/Wealthsimple buys/sells on the actual market on your behalf. The “small difference” is their profit. The no commission is a bit misleading in my opinion because we do pay both financial institutions, we just don’t see it. But it’s still better then paying $4.95 with each trade at Questrade (before they implemented the new fee structure) for individual stocks. Traditional banks are even worse, charging $9.99 for each trade still!
This is important. TANSTAAFL! If it’s commission free, they are making money another way, usually PFOF (pay for order flow). This can also mean less favorable fills. It won’t matter much if you’re a buy and hold investor, but I trade options. The worse fill prices add up a lot over time, and make paying a fee per trade preferable to losing profit on each one.
Great post. I’d also considered this but ruled it out due to potential losses of being out of the market for however long it takes the funds to transfer. Do the funds transfer out of one and into the other on the same day? Or could you be “uninvested” for a few days between transfers? As markets can swing a few percentage points within a few days I worried about losing out on those days gains essentially negating the transfer reward?
Transfer the assets in-kind without converting to cash.
If you choose to transfer “in-kind” it will move all your assets exactly as they are, so unless you were planning on doing some super short term buying and selling during the transfer period (which can be a couple weeks) there’ll be no difference in the value of your account. Any gains will still happen, plus you’ll get the reward.
As Alex and Pete have pointed out, you can transfer “in-kind” without selling anything. But only IF you’re invested in ETFs in your current brokerage, since those can be transferred between brokerages no problem. If you’re invested in mutual or seg funds that can only be held by that company, you’ll have to sell to transfer.
I tried to go to Quest trade and my only complaints were the paperwork at the time got a bit onerus including paperwork for margin accounts I had no interest in. I went to Wealthsimple instead and haven’t looked back. Using their cash account with prepaid mastercard with no exchange fees as well and some return on holdings and purchases (works in most countries you would actually want to visit). I do also have all my eggs in the same basket being with one company. I have RRSP, TFSA, FHSA, Non-Reg, as well as a corporate account with them. Only the corporate is managed by them, rest are self-directed. There was talk of introducing self-directed to corporate side as well, not sure if that launched yet.
I haven’t used Wealthsimple as extensively as QT, but from what I’ve seen Wealthsimple would also be a great home for your money.
Yes, yes, yes. These broker promotions are unbelievable right now.
One aspect not mentioned in the article is that so far as I’ve seen, all of them except wealthsimple have a maximum bonus of $10,000. Wealthsimple has a maximum of $100,000.
So, some folks will make a lot more with Wealthsimple.
I noticed that omission too.
Is it because they have a link where they get paid when you use their link to transfer your funds to Questrade?
Not a smooth move. That’s a loss of credibility there.
Regardless, I did my homework a few weeks back and transferred everything to Wealthsimple. The transfer was completed inside a week. I’m getting way, way more than $10,000 transfer bonus. Waaaaaay more!
Plus, I get ski lift tickets, airport lounge passes, and so many more freebies.
You are correct, Wealthsimple has a higher bonus ceiling, but to be honest, I don’t have as much experience with them since all my money is with QT, so I have to recommend the brokerage I actually use. I’m not NOT promoting Wealthsimple, though, they’re a great company too.
How are they getting paid? They are giving money to transfer in and then not charging fees to buy or sell. Are there hidden maintenance fees or another way they are getting that back? Just the hope that you will invest in their funds? I always like to understand the full picture.
Good question, I used to hear that Wealthsimple made it on money exchange. Also, I guess if the volumes are large enough they can pocket the bid/ask spread on buy and sell of ETFs between their own customers when then align (which is much more often the bigger they get).
Wealthsimple’s bread-and-butter income source has always been their robo-advisor service. I think they want to get you into their ecosphere with the bonus promotions, and then entice you over to the robo side. That’s just my guess, though.
In the US, Wealthsimple uses pay-per-flow to compensate for the loss of commissions. In Canada, it uses other things, such as huge forex exchange fees (I believe it was 3% in one direction when I last checked it), premium services, etc. Also, they do not pay full interest on uninvested cash.
While the trades are $0 they make money on the higher bid-ask spread than other brokerages. So in effect the fee is ‘hidden’
WS aren’t market makers, even not brokers themselves, so they do not maintain bid-ask spread, what you are describing is worse execution price that is result of pay-per-flow on the US market, but this cannot be (at least legally) the case for Canadian market. In any case this all in theory, but I’ve also noticed worse execution than for my another broker (IBKR), although all this subjective and without additional investigation we cannot certainly confirm that. This slippage is too small to fight it in the case of trades with longer investment horizon, so I’ve just accepted it.
I think we should all call our brokerage and ask them to apply their transfer promo on our existing assets or threaten to take our money out to their competitors. Maybe they’d stop with that BS if we all did it.
I want to warn others to avoid brokers and account managers who took advantage of me, Resulting in a loss of over $800,000 of my investment capital. They demanded additional funds before processing my withdrawal request, leaving me devastated. Despite my attempts to contact their customer service, I received no response. Fortunately, I discovered (chelsy__desmarais__54__(AT)__gmail__.__com) through a broadcast that explained how s c a m victims can re-cover their funds. After reaching out to them for guidance, I promptly received a response and provided the necessary legal information about my investment. To my surprise, I successfully reclaimed my money. I am determined to share this information with the public to help other victims. Special thanks to them for their outstanding work in assisting me with this matter. I hope to raise awareness and prevent others from falling victim to online schemes.
Is there an equivalent to Passiv that fully integrates with Wealthsimple?
Questrade is great but due to the incentives offered I’ve switched to Wealthsimple.
Make sure you don’t have to pay any moving fees or other fees that could cancel out the benefits of the deals. If you sell assets to move stocks, you might have to pay capital gains taxes.
This is a really interesting breakdown of the transfer bonus trend! It’s definitely tempting to chase those upfront gains. However, you’re right to question whether it’s truly worth it in the long run. I think people get caught up in the immediate cash and forget about potential fees or differences in investment options. It’s almost like being distracted by a shiny, fun Eggy Car ride when you should be focusing on the destination. A careful analysis is definitely needed before making the jump!
Wow, this “Brokerage Wars” post is such an eye-opener! I’m really intrigued by how you dissect the pros and cons of various platforms. Have you considered the impact of gamification in investing apps? It seems like more brokerages are adopting game-like features to attract younger investors. Could this shift change how we perceive risk? Also, do you think that competition among brokerages will ultimately lead to better educational resources for beginners? I’d love to hear your thoughts on that! Thanks for sharing such valuable insights—definitely checking out more at geometry dash unblocked