‘Move their money where they want’: Wealthsimple wants feds to regulate transfer fees for Canadian investors

By Joshua Santos
Updated: September 25, 2025 

A fintech company is pushing the federal government to regulate the cost Canadians pay to transfer their money from one registered savings account to another at a financial institution of their choice.

Wealthsimple Technologies Inc. is calling for action on transfer fees, known as exist fees, ahead of the federal budget expected on Nov. 4.

“Canadians should be in control of their money,” said Jessica Oliver, Wealthsimple’s head of government and regulatory relations told BNN Bloomberg in a Wednesday interview. “They should have the autonomy to move their money where they want.”

Wealthsimple asked the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada to review practices related to transfers between banks and the federal government.

It also asked Ottawa to amend the Income Tax Act and related regulations to contain exit and transfer fees on registered accounts. The FCAC said it cannot comment on pre-budget consultations.

Exit fees for Canadians moving their Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) or Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA) at major Canadian banks, such as TD Bank and RBC Royal Bank, have risen to as much as $150 per savings account from $75 to nil in the early 2010s.

“I think that it is a clear opportunity to show support for Canadians in their right to choose where they where they have their most precious assets,” said Oliver.

Canada’s six big banks, including RBC and TD, are some of the best capitalized financial institutions among the G7 countries and control over 90 per cent of the banking sector.

Wealthsimple said the fee is costing Canadians hundreds of millions of dollars annually and borne disproportionately by Gen Z and millennials.

Wealthsimple serves over three million Canadians with investment, savings, tax, and payment products. They said one in five Canadians aged 18 to 40 is a client. Together, its clients have been charged nearly $30 million in total in exit fees to move their savings to its platform.

The company offers to reimburse new clients some of the cost of moving their funds from other banks.

“Wealthsimple reimburses transfer fees for accounts that are $25,000 or higher,” said Oliver. “In fact, earlier this year, we changed our process. You used to have to ask for the reimbursement, and we decided to make it automatic. [It would be] a nicer experience for our clients, to be honest, a nicer operational experience for us. But what we found was that younger Canadians that were eligible for reimbursements were far less likely to ask for it than older Canadians.”

The push with the feds follows the results from a survey from Wealthsimple stating clients are not happy about exit fees, are discouraged from moving accounts because of fees and want action from Ottawa.

According to the survey conducted by Pollara, 67 per cent of Canadians said it’s unfair for financial institutions to charge transfer fees when moving a registered account. When they found out the average fee is as high as $150, that number increased.

One in four Canadians under the age of 40 said they’ve been deterred from moving an account because of an exit fee.

While it may not seem like much, the average balance of a TFSA for a Canadian younger than 40 is $8,000. A $150 fee accounts to nearly two per cent of their savings.


More than three-quarters of Canadians want Ottawa to eliminate these fees and ensure compensation when banks delay transfers.
Methodology

Survey findings come from an online survey of n=3,000 adult Canadians conducted by Pollara between June 19 and 25, 2025.

With files from Reuters

Joshua Santos
Journalist, BNNBloomberg.ca