Wealthsimple Managed Investing review

Who Wealthsimple Managed Investing suits

Wealthsimple Managed Investing is a robo-advisor service that invests your money in a portfolio of ETFs and manages it for you, with automatic rebalancing, dividend reinvesting and automatic deposits on every plan. It suits investors who would rather not choose and rebalance their own funds.

It becomes more attractive as your balance grows, because both the fee and the feature list improve at higher tiers. It is a weaker match if you want to choose individual stocks, hold U.S. dollars, or keep costs down on a small balance, where the full 0.5% applies.

Fees in plain English

You pay a yearly management fee on the assets in your managed accounts, plus the fund fees (MER) built into the ETFs. Wealthsimple lists $0 for opening, closing, inactive accounts and outgoing transfers. For example, a Classic portfolio on the Core plan costs 0.5% a year in management fees plus roughly 0.08% to 0.12% in fund fees. The management fee is set by your net deposits or total assets:

• $0 to $99,999: 0.5% (Core)
• $100,000 to $999,999: 0.4% (Premium)
• $1,000,000 to $2,999,999: 0.35%
• $3,000,000 to $4,999,999: 0.3%
• $5,000,000 to $9,999,999: 0.25%
• $10,000,000 or more: 0.2%

Plans and portfolios

Every plan includes automatic rebalancing, dividend reinvesting and automatic deposits. Premium and Generation add tax-loss harvesting, and Generation adds asset location. Wealthsimple describes Generation pricing as 0.4% for clients with $500,000 in assets, falling to 0.2% at $10,000,000 or more.

Portfolio styles include Classic, Socially Responsible Investing and Halal. Wealthsimple describes fund fees as approximate: about 0.08% to 0.12% for Classic, 0.23% to 0.25% for socially responsible and 0.24% to 0.56% for Halal portfolios. A Summit portfolio for private markets is available with as little as $10,000.

We found no published minimum for the standard managed portfolios on the pages we checked, so confirm with Wealthsimple if you are starting small.

Accounts offered

Managed accounts include the TFSA, RRSP, spousal RRSP, FHSA, RESP, RRIF, LIRA, non-registered and joint accounts. Managed accounts aren’t eligible for U.S. dollar accounts, and Wealthsimple publishes no separate currency conversion fee for them.

Wealthsimple also runs transfer offers that have included managed accounts. Terms change, so read the current details before you move money in.

Protection and regulation

Wealthsimple Investments Inc. is a member of the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO), and Wealthsimple says customer accounts are protected by the Canadian Investor Protection Fund’s (CIPF) Investment Dealer Fund. CIPF coverage protects you if your investment dealer becomes insolvent. It does not protect against market losses, and your portfolio’s value will rise and fall with the markets.