Wealthsimple review 2023 | Best Money Hacks

Since its launch in 2014, the Wealthsimple brand has developed a strong reputation for offering online, easy-to-use, low-fee financial services. It’s come a long way since its humble beginnings exclusively as a robo-advisor, having branched out to include a discount brokerage (Wealthsimple Trade, spending and saving accounts with a prepaid rewards debit card (Wealthsimple Cash), and an online tax filing service (Wealthsimple Tax). So which, if any, of these services are right for you?

Here’s what you need to know about investing or trading with Wealthsimple, including its various product offerings, how it works and associated fees. While Wealthsimple Invest, Wealthsimple Trade and Wealthsimple Cash were earlier offered under separate apps, they’re now all part of just one Wealthsimple” app—which has made the user experience more convenient. Only Wealthsimple Tax remains a separate app.

Open a Wealthsimple Invest account*

Investing with Wealthsimple: robo-advisor or discount brokerage?

Both Wealthsimple Invest and Wealthsimple Trade are excellent low-fee investment options. Choosing between the two services comes down to three factors:

How confident you are in managing your money on your own.

How much time and effort you want to put into managing your investments.

Whether you’re willing to pay higher fees for a truly hands-off option.

If you aren’t interested in choosing and managing your own investments, Wealthsimple Invest is a robo-advisor, and it could be the way to go. You’ll be recommended one of three diversified portfolios of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) based on suitability factors, such as your financial goals and risk tolerance.

With the robo-advisor option—also known as “managed investing”—pretty much everything is on auto-pilot once you fund your account, especially if you set up pre-authorized transfers to invest on a regular basis. So, even if you want to alter or tweak your portfolio in any way, you won’t be able to do this. If your aim is to pay as little as possible in fees and you’d like to choose your own ETFs, stocks and/or want to invest in cryptocurrency, an online broker, like Wealthsimple Trade, may be for you.

Does Wealthsimple have fees for investing?

Let’s break it down based on the type of investing you do with the app.

Wealthsimple Invest charges two types of fees:

Portfolio management fee: This is an annual percentage of the total money you have invested—calculated daily, and charged monthly For clients with balances less than $100,000, that fee is 0.5%; balances of $100,000 or more are charged 0.4%.
MER: Each individual ETF has its own fee (set by the ETF provider), which you’ll see referred to as the fund’s management expense ratio (MER). Fund MERs vary: “Classic” portfolios are 0.12% to 0.15%, Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) is 0.21% to 0.23% and the Halal portfolio is 0.25% to 0.5%.

Wealthsimple Trade’s fees depend on the type of investments you choose:

1. Stocks: $0. There are no commission fees to buy, sell or trade stocks and no account or management fees of any kind.
2. ETFs: All ETFs still have a MER, but you’ll have thousands to choose from—including those with fees as low as 0.05%. And that’s all you’ll pay—there are no commissions or account fees.
3. Crypto: There’s a built-in spread of 5% to when you buy or sell cryptocurrencies. But you don’t pay any extra fees and there’s no cost to deposit or withdraw coins. Also, if you stake coins on Wealthsimple, you’ll pay them 30% of your staking rewards.
The one exception to stock and ETF fees with Wealthsimple is when you’re investing in U.S. equities. In that case, you’ll either pay a 1.5% foreign exchange fee (because you can only hold Canadian currency in your account under Wealthsimple Trade’s basic plan) or you can subscribe to the Trade Plus plan for $10 a month, which lets you hold U.S. dollars in your account so you can avoid the foreign exchange fee.

Read our reviews for Wealthsimple Invest and Wealthsimple Trade below for more information about their fees and services in general.

The one exception to stock and ETF fees with Wealthsimple is a 1.5% foreign exchange conversion fee for investing in U.S. equities, because you can only hold Canadian currency in your account under Wealthsimple basic plan. You can avoid this fee by subscribing to the Plus plan for $10 a month, which lets you hold U.S. dollars in your account.

Read our reviews for Wealthsimple Invest and Wealthsimple Trade below for more information about the fees and services in general.

Pros and cons of investing with Wealthsimple

Pros:

- Valuable benefits: Investors with over $100,000 in Wealthsimple’s managed portfolios get a 15% discount to Willful (a Canadian online Will service) and six months free access to Medcan Year Round Care plan. Those with over $500,000 also get 50% off Medcan’s Comprehensive Care plan.
  Seamless money movement: Wealthsimple investors can seamlessly move money between their Stocks & ETFs, crypto, and cash accounts. For example, you can fund your cash account, deposit money into your trading account, make a profit on a stock trade, and then transfer the profit into your crypto account to buy bitcoin.
  - User experience: Both its app and its website are slick and easy to use. You can track your TFSA and RRSP accounts to ensure you don’t over-contribute. (Wealthsimple.com won a Webby Award for Best Financial Services Website—twice.)
  - Reputable brand: In 2021, Wealthsimple reported that it had $15 billion in assets under management, and more than 2 million users. Plus, it’s been recognized as one of the top 100 Global Financial Technology Companies by Fintech 100 since 2016.
  - Passive investing: Wealthsimple’s robo-advisor advocates low-cost, passive investing using the power of ETFs. The likes of Warren Buffet have advocated the principle of buy-and-hold, and ETFs historically outperform actively managed mutual funds over the long term. And, because you lose less of your return to fees, you get a better net return.
    Covered transfer fees: Wealthsimple may reimburse administrative transfer fees up to $150 on investment transfers into Wealthsimple which are greater than $5,000 in value.
  - Socially responsible investing (SRI) and Halal options: Both SRI and Halal (investments that comply with Islamic law) options are available. These provide the opportunity for investors who want to support companies that prioritize environmental and social concerns or who wish to invest their money in compliance with Islamic law.
    - Easy setup: It takes just a few minutes to set up a Wealthsimple Invest account. After inputting your personal information, including your social insurance number, you will answer a survey about your finances and investing knowledge. Based on your answers, you are matched with one of three broad portfolio based on your risk tolerance and investment timeline: Conservative, balanced or growth.
    - No minimum deposit: It’s worth noting that while many online investing platforms require a minimum deposit of at least $1,000 to sign up for a robo-investing account, there’s no required minimum to create an account with Wealthsimple Invest. If you fund your account with $10, Wealthsimple will actually invest most of that (minus fees) into the ETFs that are part of your chosen portfolio, in your whichever account type you choose. That can be registered retirement savings plans (RRSPs), tax free savings accounts (TFSA) and other types of registered and non-registered accounts. For Wealthsimple Trade, its discount brokerage product, you can fund your account with as little as $1.
    - Low fees: As mentioned above, Wealthsimple Invest’s portfolio management fee is either 0.4% or 0.5% (depending on the total amount of money you invest). You will also pay a MER that starts as low as 0.2%. If you’re managing your own investments, there are no fees to buy, sell or trade stocks or ETFs using the online brokerage.
    - Automatic rebalancing: Portfolio rebalancing is when you buy and sell securities in your portfolio to return your holdings to its strategic allocation. In their managed portfolios, Wealthsimple does this free for you based on changes in the market, deposits/withdrawals, changes in your risk score, as well as changes in the ETFs themselves.
    - Dividend reinvesting: With Wealthsimple Invest, your dividends are tracked and automatically reinvested the day after they are received. Once earned, the dividends are used to rebalance your portfolio by purchasing the ETF that’s furthest from its strategic weight.
    - Account options: For Wealthsimple Invest, you have quite a few choices, including RRSP (as well as spousal RRSP), TFSA, registered education savings plan (RESP), locked-in retirement account (LIRA), life income fund (LIF), non-registered (personal or joint account with no limits), registered retirement income fund (RRIF), cash (for savings and spending), as well as corporate account options. Wealthsimple Trade accounts, however, are currently limited to personal, RRSP, TFSA and crypto.
      Micro-investing options: With its roundup feature, Wealthsimple will “round up” the price of your everyday purchases made using your Wealthsimple Cash (spending) card to the nearest dollar and automatically deposit the “spare change” into an investment of your choice, including stocks, crypto or your cash account.
Cons:
- Few human advisors: Access to human advisors is limited to Wealthsimple clients holding at least $100,000 in their accounts. If you have administrative questions, about your accounts for example, there is a help centre loaded with information and resources. And if you want to talk to a support representative, you can connect with one for an online chat or a phone call during regular business hours
- Tax optimization: When you have a Wealthsimple Invest Black account, which is the a premium service for clients with investments of over $100,000, Wealthsimple can help with “tax-loss harvesting.” This allows you to offset capital gains with capital losses, thereby trimming your capital gains tax bill. Unfortunately, this service is not available to clients with a basic account.
- Limited portfolio options: For investors with under $500,000 invested, Wealthsimple’s robo-advisor offers just three portfolio options—which is fewer than some of its competitors. This may prove limiting for those who want to be more granular with their portfolio’s customization.
- No physical branches: Investors cannot meet with their Wealthsimple advisors in person. If you need to speak with a human, you can chat or call them regular business hours, and you can email 24/7. If need be, you can file a complaint via the help centre.
- Higher MER for SRIs: Fees charged on SRI and Halal funds are noticeably higher than other assets. They can hover to about 0.5%, compared to the sub 0.2% MERs of their “classic” ETFs.
A Wealthsimple review for 2023: Invest, Trade and Cash

A technology-driven, easy-to-use, and low-cost investment service launched in 2014–has three main offerings. Since the apps were merged into one recently, these services are now grouped under the services of “managed investing,” “stocks and ETFs” and “cash.” Here’s a look at each:

Wealthsimple Invest*

The robo-advisor service from Wealthsimple is ideal for novice investors or those not comfortable managing their own investment portfolios. The algorithm recommends a portfolio for you based on your financial goals and risk tolerance.

New clients will spend just a few minutes answering questions online about their age, comfort level with risk and investment goals. The answers determine which portfolio is recommended: Conservative, balanced or growth. You can put your portfolio into many different types of accounts, including registered, such as RRSPs, TFSAs, RESPs, non-registered accounts and more. And, as mentioned above, there are also SRI and Halal investment options. Just be sure to look at the fees. In terms of cost, Wealthsimple Invest’s fees are as follows:

There’s an overall portfolio management fee of 0.5% for accounts of under $100,000. It’s slightly cheaper at 0.4% for Wealthsimple Black—a premium service for accounts over $100,000.
The MER on Wealthsimple’s ETFs range from about 0.12% to 0.5%

So, depending on the size of your portfolio and the types of ETFs you want to hold, the total fees could range from about 0.5% to 1% per year—calculated daily and charged monthly.

What does that look like in real terms? You’d pay about $250 to $500 in annual fees for a $50,000 portfolio.

Open a Wealthsimple Invest account* >

For those who want to lower the costs of investing even further—and who are also interested in building their own portfolios with select ETFs, stocks and cryptocurrencies—Wealthsimple’s discount brokerage service is an appealing option.

That’s because all its ETF and stock purchases, sales and trades are free of charge. (You still pay the management fees, or MERs, on ETF holdings, as explained above.) Crypto trades and purchases include a price spread (1.5% to 2% per transaction), but there are no extra fees on top of that, and there’s no fee to deposit or withdraw coins.

Clients make their transactions online using a mobile app and can hold their portfolios in four account types: Personal (non-registered), TFSA, RRSP and crypto.

Open a Wealthsimple Trade account* >

Investors can buy ETFs and stocks listed on exchanges such as NYSE, NASDAQ, TSX, TSX-V, NEO and CSE, as well as some limited securities on the BATS Exchange. There are other limitations that some Canadian investors might care about: Stocks must be priced at a minimum of $0.50 per share and trade an average of at least 50,000 shares daily; and if an asset is a dual-listed security, meaning it’s on both a U.S. and a Canadian exchange, only the Canadian-listed asset is available/

On the plus side, fractional shares are available through Wealthsimple Trade, which makes it easy to purchase stocks even with relatively low amounts of money. And from a cost perspective, free trades are hard to beat, given that some other discount brokerages charge up to $10 a transaction.

So, how does Wealthsimple make money on its trading services?

It says earnings come primarily from a 1.5% currency exchange fee, which includes a spread, charged on Canadian-to-U.S. dollar conversions (and vice-versa). The currency conversion is necessary when trading U.S.-listed securities in the basic account. Alternatively, there’s a premium $10-per-month plan, called Wealthsimple Trade Plus, which lets you hold U.S. currency in your RRSP, TFSA or personal account. With the Plus account, in addition to commission-free trading, you’ll be able to buy and sell U.S. stocks without the worry of foreign exchange (FX) fees.

Watch: MoneySense – Investing in Cryptocurrency

Wealthsimple Cash

Wealthsimple Cash is a spending/saving service with a cash-back rewards Mastercard. It provides a secure way to send and receive money with no account or transaction fees and no exchange fees on foreign transactions (aside from the currency conversion itself). You can send or receive up to $5,000 per day, with no limit on the number of transactions and no security questions (use two-factor authentication for added security).

Additionally, apart from using Interac to transfer money, you can use Wealthsimple Cash to send and receive money from others who use the app, by simply sharing your unique handle with them. Unlike some other services for sending and receiving money, Wealthsimple Cash doesn’t require a phone number or email address, so you don’t need to give out any other personal information. (For added privacy, you can also control who can find you on the app.)

You can get a Wealthsimple Cash Mastercard in both digital and physical form. With this card, you can make everyday purchases and withdraw funds from ATMs. And what’s more? You earn 1% cash back in the asset of your choosing: Stocks, crypto, or cash. The card is essentially a prepaid Mastercard card, so you can use it online or in stores wherever Mastercard is accepted. It is compatible with Apple Pay and Google Pay apps.

Your Cash account is available on the Wealthsimple app and is quick and easy to set-up. Once approved, you’ll have access to a virtual Wealthsimple card immediately, and a physical card will be mailed to you.

Funds in a Wealthsimple Cash account are protected by the Canadian Insurance Deposit Corporation (CDIC) up to specified limits. You can even get free cash for inviting your friends to use the app.

Wealthsimple FAQs

What is Wealthsimple?

Wealthsimple is an online Canadian financial services provider that offers a suite of low-fee and easy-to-use products for investing, trading, spending and saving (and spending, too). Its suite of services includes a robo-advisor that offers beginners—or hands-off investors who prefer to set-it-and-forget-it with their investments—a choice of three investment portfolios to suit their risk tolerance and financial goals.

For DIY investors and traders who want to be hands on with their investments, Wealthsimple offers a discount online brokerage on which investors can trade stocks, ETFs and options. To sweeten the deal for customers, they now also offer spending and saving accounts (Wealthsimple Cash), with a cash back debit card through Mastercard.

Who owns Wealthsimple?

Millennial entrepreneur and self-described “boring investor” Michael Katchen launched Wealthsimple in September 2014 as a low-cost, low-effort approach to investing. Since then, CEO Katchen has seen his company transform from a humble Toronto start-up to the largest online-only financial services company in Canada, with more than 2 million clients, $15 billion in assets under management (as of 2021) and an international office in New York.

Wealthsimple is primarily owned by Power Corporation of Canada, under the subsidiary Power Financial. The nearly 100-year-old international management and holding company has over $470 billion in assets, including Power Financial, IGM and Pargesa and focuses on insurance, retirement, wealth management and investment businesses, including a portfolio of alternative asset investment platforms. Described as a “Canadian financial giant,” Power Financial also has majority stakes in Great-West Lifeco and Portag3.

Is Wealthsimple safe?

The short answer: Yes. But it’s important you invest your money in a way that suits your financial goals and risk tolerance. And that’s the case with any investment service and provider you choose. Wealthsimple is built to cater to a wide set of clients, so if you don’t need that one-on-one care, but want a simple way to create and build a portfolio with little to no maintenance, then it could be for you.

Another benefit with the Canadian fintech? Your Wealthsimple investment accounts are eligible for protection by the Canadian Investor Protection Fund (CIPF), meaning that if Wealthsimple Investments Inc. goes out of business, securities and cash missing from those accounts (not market losses) are eligible for up to $1-million in losses per account type.

What can I do with my money at Wealthsimple?

Wealthsimple is best known for its robo-advisor service—formerly known as Wealthsimple Invest– which is a “set-it-and-forget-it” service of low-fee portfolios built using ETFs.

In a nutshell, most ETFs allow you to invest your money across an entire market—such as Canadian stocks, U.S. stocks, high yield bonds, Canadian REITs etc.—instead of trying to pick and choose the winning companies in each market.

In this way, Wealthsimple provides an easy solution for clients to be able to diversify their portfolios and likely earn decent returns on their investments over the long term, while choosing to take on risk that may be appropriate for their investment goals and time horizon.

The company’s other main offerings include a discount brokerage—formerly known as Wealthsimple Trade—a service that allows DIY investors to purchase stocks, ETFs, options and cryptocurrency; and Wealthsimple Cash, which includes spending accounts, saving accounts and a cash back debit card that lets you send, spend or receive money instantly with no fees and 1% back in stock, crypto, or cash on all purchases.

(See above for how each of these services works—and how much they cost).

So, what’s not to like?

Wealthsimple has clearly made it easy to invest, trade and manage cash, with no required minimum deposits, no transaction fees, no trading fees, a user-friendly website and app. There are, however, a few considerations to keep in mind:

Investment options: Wealthsimple’s robo-advisor clients are limited to three boilerplate portfolios that are chosen for them based on their financial goals and risk tolerance. Some other robo-advisors offer a larger selection of ETF portfolios. Similarly, DIY clients are limited to stocks, ETFs and cryptocurrencies, without access to bonds, global equities, precious metals and many other asset types offered by other discount brokers.
Fees: While 0.5% to 1% may not seem like much for the robo-advisor service, how much is paid can add up over the long term. For example, if you invested $6,000 every year for 20 years, assuming an annual return of 6% and a fee of 0.5%, you’d pay a total of $13,240 in fees. At the higher end of the fee spectrum, at 1%, the total fees paid would be $25,641. As for trading within Wealthsimple, the no-fee “basic” plan will be attractive to many, but the 1.5% currency conversion fee might prove too costly for those who wish to actively trade in U.S. stocks and ETFs. If buying and selling U.S. equities is important to you, there’s a “plus” plan that allows you to hold these investments in U.S. currency without the worry of foreign exchange fees, but it costs $10 a month (so, clearly not no-fee).
Account types: While other discount brokerages carry a full range of accounts, including RESPs, LIRAs, RIFs, LIFs, and margin accounts, Wealthsimple Trade just offers this list: personal, TFSA, RRSP and crypto accounts.

Should you use Wealthsimple?

There’s no question that Wealthsimple has a lot going for it. Would-be investors who might otherwise endlessly procrastinate on setting up a portfolio will benefit big-time from Wealthsimple’s robo-advisor service. Investing in a diversified portfolio of low-fee ETFs has historically returned more than bank interest over the long term, and is a simple and effective way to keep the purchasing power of your savings from being eroded by inflation.

Similarly, DIY investors who want to buy and trade ETFs and stocks will undoubtedly save money on fees with their commission-free trading service.

On the other hand, managed portfolio clients with larger portfolios may want to consider other robo-advisors that may offer lower fees, and DIY investors who want more investment and account options may consider other discount brokers.

As for Wealthsimple Cash, the no-fee aspect (including no exchange fees on foreign transactions) and 1% back in stock, crypto, or cash on all purchases will appeal to many.