Some of you may recall that I moved my self-directed TFSA with TD Direct Investing and my self-directed RRSP with Questrade to Wealthsimple Trade back in May.
In case you’re wondering, I wrote a real user review comparing Questrade and Wealthsimple Trade.
Based on my recent online broker switch, I thought it’d be beneficial to write a post and provide more details of my experience in case any readers are considering switching to Wealthsimple Trade.
Reasons for moving from TD & Questrade to Wealthsimple Trade.
Although we were using Wealthsimple Trade for the investment portfolio for our kids and had been pretty happy with it, we didn’t use Wealthsimple Trade as extensively compared to TD Direct Investing and Questrade.
There were two key reasons for moving from TD Direct Investing and Questrade to Wealthsimple Trade:
- Wealthsimple Trade was running a transfer bonus promotion and I’d receive over $2,500 transfer bonus for transferring both my TFSA and RRSP to Wealthsimple Trade (note: the transfer bonus is no longer available but Wealthsimple always has enticing promotions).
- We wanted to take advantage of the fractional DRIP from Wealthsimple Trade
Other than maxing out my TFSA at the beginning of each year and using the new contribution room to buy dividend stocks, I haven’t been making other transactions in my TFSA. Similarly, I have stopped contributing to my self-directed RRSP and have rather focused on contributing to the spousal RRSP. Therefore, I’d only make a few transactions in my RRSP each year.
For some low yield stocks like Apple and Costco, it is difficult to get enough shares to collect enough dividends each quarter to drip one full share (i.e. a lot of money is required). Long time readers may recall that we used to use ShareOwner for fractional DRIP so fractional DRIP from Wealthsimple has always been enticing.
Because we hold several low yield dividend stocks, I have always wanted to enroll in fractional DRIP to take advantage of the compounding effect. I never made the switch to Wealthsimple, mostly not wanting to do additional work (e.g. laziness). However, the $2,500 transfer bonus was enticing enough for me to get my butt in gear and initiate the transfer.
Note: Wealthsimple had an iPhone 15 & 15 Pro transfer bonus last year but since I’m not an iPhone user, it wasn’t as enticing as a cash transfer bonus).
My switching experience
Overall, switching from TD and Questrade to Wealthsimple Trade was very straightforward.
First I had to open self-directed RRSP and TFSA accounts with Wealthsimple. One can do this via both a desktop browser or on the phone app. I installed the Wealthsimple app on my phone and after a few clicks, I opened RRSP and TFSA accounts.
To make sure I am eligible for the transfer bonus promotion, I filled out the form and entered the necessary information. A few days later a Wealthsimple agent reached out via email and asked me if I needed further help. The agent replied to my email questions quickly throughout the process. I also could schedule a call to talk to the agent if I needed to.
After confirming the transfer bonus with the Wealthsimple agent, I went on the phone app, clicked on “Transfer an account to Wealthsimple”, and followed the instructions to start the in-kind transfer process.
Rather than entering my account information manually, Wealthsimple partnered with Wealthica to allow me to sign in to my financial institution (in this case Questarde and TD Direct Investing) and select the account I wanted to transfer. This step simplified the transfer process significantly and it took less than five minutes to complete.
Note: this was very different from the process I had to do with TD & Questrade many, many years ago needing to fill out paperwork and mail it in (Questrade had simplified the process in recent years so you can manually fill out information online).
When you enter the transfer information, you can select all in cash, in-kind, or a combination. Since I didn’t want to sell any of my existing stocks, I selected an in-kind transfer.
When you transfer an account to Wealthsimple, Wealthsimple will automatically reimburse your financial institution’s transfer fee if you move $15,000 or more in assets.
A few days later after submitting the transfer requests, I received emails from both TD and Questrade informing me about the requests.
After about five business days, some of my TFSA holdings started showing up in Wealthsimple. It took another day for the rest of the holdings to transfer over and then one more day for the remaining cash in my TFSA to show up.
The in-kind RRSP transfer took three days extra compared to the TFSA transfer. Again a few of my stock holdings showed up first and it took two more days for the rest of the holdings and the cash to show up.
I received completion email notifications from Wealthsimple when the transfers were completed.
The transfer process was smooth but I did encounter one transfer problem – residual shares and cash.
Now this isn’t entirely Wealthsimple’s fault. It’s mostly due to how dividends are paid out and me enrolling in dividend reinvestment plans (DRIPs) with Questrade and TD.
During the transfer process, dividends from the likes of Royal Bank, Emera, and Costco were paid out. These dividends didn’t get deposited in Wealthsimple because on the ex-dividend date, these shares were held with TD or Questrade, so the dividends were deposited in these accounts. Furthermore, because we had enabled DRIP for both TFSA and RRSP, we would drip additional shares, whenever we were eligible. This meant we dripped some additional shares and these shares showed up in TD and Questrade.
So once the transfers were completed, my TFSA account in TD and my RRSP account in Questrade were effectively “closed” and I could no longer access them. But I could see a TFSA value in TD Direct Investing and the RRSP activities were still showing up under Questrade Account Activities.
When I phoned TD, as I had expected, they told me that I had some residual shares and cash left in my TFSA. When I asked how I could transfer them over to Wealthsipmple, the agent told me I had two options:
- Sell all my shares and initiate another transfer. Selling shares would cost $9.99 per transaction and TD would charge me another $150 in fees (I had about $500 worth of shares & cash in my TD TFSA)
- Initiate another transfer. TD would charge me $150 in transfer fee
Since my TD TFSA value was under $15,000, I knew Wealthsimple wouldn’t reimburse any transfer fees. Therefore, it made no sense for me to initiate another transfer with TD and have to pay the transfer fee.
I also reached out to Questrade. Fortunately, the Questrade agent told me that Questrade would do several residual sweeps and transfer all the residual shares and cash over to the new broker.
Being slightly stuck with TD, I phoned Wealthsimple. Thanks to having priority phone support status, I talked to a Wealthsmple agent right away (what a treat, this rarely happens nowadays when you call a company, I’d usually get the “we’re experiencing higher than anticipated phone volume”. The agent assured me that because Wealthsimple gets these in-kind transfer requests all the time, they would usually do a residual sweep three or four weeks after the completion of the transfer to ensure everything is transferred over properly. They’d do additional residual sweeps if necessary.
I was very pleased after the phone call. Lo and behold about three weeks after the completion of my TFSA transfer, I saw the residual shares and cash transferred over to Wealthsimple. The same happened to my RRSP account.
Problem solved!
Things I liked
Overall I had a very good transferring & switching experience. There are many things I really liked about Wealthsimple that I’d like to highlight.
- Automatic reimbursement of fees – I didn’t need to submit statements to show Wealthsimple the transfer fees ($172.50 total per transfer respectively, $150 for transferring, $22.50 for additional fees). Wealthsimple reimbursed these fees and deposited the money in my accounts automatically.
- Transfer bonus was deposited automatically – Wealthsimple said the transfer bonus would get deposited 30 days after completion of the transfer. In reality, I got the bonus bonus in about 10 days. Due to the market going up during the transfer process, I received more than $2,500 in transfer bonus.
- Wealthica integration – I pointed this out earlier but the Wealhica integration was very well done such that I didn’t need to manually enter my account information.
- Tracking the transfer status – in the phone app, I could track the transfer status going from Submitted to Processed, to Transferring, to Completed, to Reimbursed. Such detailed status was not available with TD and Questrade.
- Correct adjusted cost basis – I transferred RRSP and TFSA so it didn’t really matter if the adjusted cost basis was correct or not post-transfer, but it would matter A LOT if I were to do an in-kind transfer with my non-registered account. I was pleased that Wealthsimple Trade had the correct ACB for both my RRSP and TFSA holdings. In theory, if I were to transfer a non-registered account, the ACB should be correct and I wouldn’t have any tax implications.
Things I didn’t like
Although the transferring process was very smooth, there were a few minor things I didn’t like.
- No dual listed stocks available – in my RRSP I held CIBC shares on both TSX and NYSE exchanges. I did this years ago as a currency hedge with the plan to sell US CM shares to get some US cash. However, I never sold these shares. When I transferred my RRSP from Questrade to Wealthsmple Trade, these US CM shares were automatically converted to Canadian shares. After some investigation, I found that it was not possible to buy US CM shares traded on NYSE on Wealtsimple Trade. Similarly, it was not possible to buy the dual-traded stocks on the US exchanges.
- Stock lending was turned on by default – Wealthsimple has this stock lending feature that could potentially provide additional passive income. I don’t think it makes sense to participate so I didn’t want to sign up. But to my surprise, this feature is turned on by default and I had to turn it off manually.
- App driven – I found out that some functions like stock lending and dividend reinvestment are only available on the phone app. You can’t enable these functions if you use a desktop browser.
- Email notifications – all the notifications are enabled by default. If you don’t disable some under your account settings, you will get a lot of notifications.
- Lack of notification on residual sweep completion – if there was a lack of notification from Wealthsimple, it was the lack of notification for completion of residual sweeps. For some reason, I didn’t get any emails about additional shares & cash being transferred from TD and Questrade. Furthermore, these residual sweeps didn’t show up under Activities either. The only reason I noticed these sweeps was because the cash amount increased or I noticed some share numbers had changed.
Summary – My experience on switching from TD & Questrade to Wealthsimple Trade
Overall my switching experience from TD Direct Investing and Questrade to Wealthsimple Trade was overwhelmingly positive. I can’t believe I didn’t do this earlier.
I found the Wealthsimple phone app well designed and very intuitive. My only complaint is that with the app installed on my phone, I end up checking my portfolio more often than I like. In fact, I plan to uninstall the phone app soon and check my Wealthsimple accounts via a desktop browser only.
Do I enjoy Wealthsimple Trade so far?
Absolutely!
In case you’re thinking of opening an account with Wealhsimple or transferring your existing account over to Wealthsimple, you can use my referral code. You’ll get a $25 reward for simply signing up.
Note: I have no association with Wealthsimple. I am not compensated by Wealthsimple for promoting Wealthsimple. The only thing I get if you sign up with Wealthsimple is the referral rewards.
Am just debating making the move from Questrade to WS myself, and this blog answered every question I had. Thanks for posting!
You’re welcome.
Hi Bob,
I just stumbled onto your blog. I love it!
A couple of questions for you – are you using WS Self directed accounts for RRSP/ TFSA or their managed services?
If Self Directed, where are you investing them? I just read your piece on ETFs and I found that to be extremely helpful too.
Thanks,
Vik
Hi Vik,
Thanks. Yes I use self directed WS for RRSP, TFSA, and non-registered accounts.
What did you mean where am I investing them? Could you elaborate?
I meant what is your portfolio composition in these accounts? x% XEQT, y% in XGRO etc.
Thank you
Our portfolio is here https://www.tawcan.com/dividends/ I don’t share the $ and % breakdown publically.
Hi Bob,
Something that I missing in WS is all the dividends information per stock, such as the Payment Frequency, Ex-dividend Date and Payout Date. And one thing very helpful that Scotia iTrade has which is the Dividend Income Projection, which shows an estimation of the income that I would receive monthly for a year. Those are features very important for the dividend income community 🙂
I called WS and explained the feature to their team, they mentioned they would added to their list of “improve services”. I really hope they add that type of features, that would make WS more complete. I guess I would have to use a spreadsheet to calculate all that myself while they introduce something like that. Unless you know any good tool I can use for such a information.
Just wanted to share from my experience so far with WS.
Hi Lenny,
You’re right, if WS were to offer these features, it’d make it much more attractive. I use my own spreadsheet to track dividends so I don’t miss these features. 🙂
As always, well done Bob. Very informative! I am interesting in switching, do you also opened their Cash account? I called them and they mentioned that it is basically a chequing account with high interest rate. It sounds interesting to me, and maybe switching payroll there would make things faster for investment purposes.
Any thoughts about the WS Cash account?
I didn’t open a cash account because the bonus for me was deposited in my non-registered account. But to take advantage of the 1% matching bonus right now, you will need a cash account. Overall I think the cash account makes sense due to the high interest rate.
Bob, do you know if you can use WS trading app when overseas traveling on vacation? When you were in Denmark recently for several weeks, were you able to access the trading platform and make trades or are there restrictions when overseas? When I was visiting Australia in 2023 I was able to access RBC DI and do trading there when on vacation.
Not sure about overseas but it worked fine when I was in Mexico.
I had no problem while outside of Canada.
Just curious why you think the lending feature doesn’t make sense?
I don’t like the idea of lending the share to someone else and the potential tax complication.
Thanks for the info! I’ve been thinking of transferring as well. Wondering if WS allows simple options trading like covered calls in the RRSP and TFSA?
They do support option trading but I haven’t looked into it since we don’t do option trading.
Hi Bob
Thanks for sharing your switching to WS experience ! I am an ardent reader of your blog and I should say I did gain from your insights and posts on Investment and a big Thank You. I should share my profile here which may support my queries – I am an average non technical investor and in my early 70s – After my retirement in 2021 I switched to Dividend Investment strategy as suggested by one of my friends and around the same time I came across your blogs which really reinforced my decision to move in this direction. My portfolio ( Me and my Wife and I manage ) today is Appx.$500k which includes RRSP+TFSA+Margin
I am not clear why some one should switch to WS ? which is 100% only online ? Is it because the trading is 100% free ? For my profile is it worth switching considering fractional DRIP feature ?
* As Dividend income Investor I am not a frequent trader and $9.99 per trade gets averaged out on purchases and I am not seeing it making a big dent on my returns.
* With WS the currency is only C$ for trading – I am not sure how this affects buying/selling US stocks and also dividend payments when received as cash ?
This is something general – How long you think one can continue to “Self Manage” ? I think using only online “services” in later years in life may pose it’s own problems/limitations – Nothing like going to a brick and mortar bank to see what is going on or to get some help ? My gut feel is I may continue may be into early 80s. After that leave it to my bank to whatever they offer?
Just wondering …Do you have an exit strategy with your Portfolio ? If you have touched on this in your blog already , please send me the reference. May be I missed it.If not Will really appreciate your inputs on my thoughts above –
Thanks Bob ! Looking forward to listening to your insights more !
Hi Naren,
Thank you very much for all your support. If you’re quoting the $9.99 per trade I assume you might be using TD Direct. Even though TD has many branches, recently most branches in our area doesn’t have a TD Direct representative so when I do need support, I’d have to call TD Direct and get help from one of the phone agents. My experience with TD Direct and WealthSimple via phone support has been more or less similar. In fact, I think WS might come out slightly ahead because I’m a premium client and get prioritized support.
You did raise some valid concerns with WS. WS is definitely not for everyone and maybe in your situation a broker from one of the Canadian banks is a better choice. 🙂
For exit strategy, you might want to take a look at this one – https://www.tawcan.com/financial-independence-journey-2024-update/
WS does offer a USD account and trading in USD. It’s free if you are Premium or Generation, $10 per month if you are not on the Premium tier.
The issue is that you can’t convert CAD USD at WS without a hefty penalty. IE: they don’t allow Nordbert’s Gambit.
I also just recently switched to WS and the process couldnt have been easier. Some issues I have seen so far is their preference for users using the app. I prefer to do my investing/research on the computer so I found myself switching back and forth depending on what I needed to do. Another thing is TD just has more information for when I want to research a new stock. Pages and pages of reports, technicals and nice overviews. WS is very thin in this regard, so I find myself researching on other sites then coming back to WS.
Keep up the good work with the blog, cheers
Hi Trevor,
I agree, having to use the app for all the features & functions is slightly annoying. It would be nice to be able to log into multiple accounts on the same phone (for Mrs. T and I… I guess it’s possible, just have to log out & in then enter the security code). Yes, TD has way more info available compared to WS but you can find a lot of the info on the internet already. 🙂
Thank you! I’ve been mulling over switching my registered holdings from TD to Wealthsimple for over a year and was expecting potential hidden issues resulting in me continually delaying the move.
This was incredibly helpful.
Daryn
You’re very welcome Daryn. I figured this post would be helpful for folks that are mulling over the decision. 🙂
One caveat… I recently switched to WS from RBC Direct. I have a LIRA and an RRSP account. I asked for everything to be transferred in kind. Unfortunately, WS does not support transferring QGRW for some reason. They do support owning it though so I changed my request to sell and transfer cash. This went smoothly and I had no trouble rebuying QGRW in my WS Accounts. The issue arose when I looked at my RBC statements. Unbeknownst to me (my fault entirely), RBC charged me for the sale of my QGRW holdings as a broker assisted trade. This, of course, cost me hundreds. Lesson learned.
Interesting, thank you for the data point.
Biggest drawback for me is you can’t execute Nordbert’s Gambit in WS. I transferred my accounts for the 1% bonus (and was already using them for RESP and cash accounts). Once the bonus is paid in full I’ll move my RRSP and LIRA back to Questrade. TFSA will likely stay with WS because I’ll probably hold mostly Canadian assets there.
I agree. Even when WealthSimple allows for USD RIF’s and I move them from Questrade, I’ll be keeping my Questrade account active just so I can convert large USD withdrawals from my accounts.
Hi Mike,
Yes, you can’t do Norbert’s Gambit in WS. You can transfer CAD to USD via the app/web interface but they’ll charge you an exchange fee. I haven’t been using Norbert’s Gambit in a while so really it’s not an issue for us. Interesting plan for moving your RRSP and LIRA back to Questrade. 🙂
I agree with what you mentioned about how there’s no information about the residual sweeps showing up in your account. You have to pay very close attention and notice that some money has been added.
I did notice that on the monthly statement there is a line there about a deposit although it’s not very specific as to where this deposit came from it is at least some sort of confirmation that you received it.
Yes, no info about the residual sweep in your account is slightly annoying but lucky it wasn’t a lot of money so it was easy to spot. Good point on the monthly statement. Having said that, it would have been nice for WS to specifically call out the residual sweep deposits.
I too just transferred my and my wife’s TFSA’s and our Margin account from Questrade to Wealthsimple for a couple reasons. One definitely was the 1% transfer bonus. And since I am now in the decumulation phase of life, the other was the no fee stock transactions. Much better if I want to sell a handful of shares now and again.
For a couple of our account transfers some of the stocks arrived in 5 days but others took over 3 weeks to arrive.
A couple things WealthSimple doesn’t currently offer which meant our RIF’s and RRSP’s stayed back with Questrade is they don’t offer self managed Spousal RRSP’s or USD RIF’s. Support told me those are coming at some point in the future.
Also, I think your info about the referral rewards is backwards. It’s you who will receive the $250 or $1,000 if they use your referral code and become Premium or Generational clients within 30 days. They will only receive the $25.
I enjoy your blog, thanks.
Hi Mark,
The no fee trading is definitely a plus especially in the decumulation phase.
As you mentioned, right now WealthSimple doesn’t offer self directed spousal RRSP so we have to stay with Questrade for now. Earlier this year, WS stated self directed RRSP would be available later this year but no update yet.
Oh right, I think I got the referral rewards backward. Thank you for pointing this out. I’ll correct it accordingly.
Thank you for your support, I do really appreciate it.