Let’s say you’ve got a major purchase coming up: you’re about to renovate your home, or are months away from your wedding. To cover the costs, a common approach is to liquidate a part of your portfolio. But one option that’s not as well known is accessing a portfolio line of credit, which allows you to borrow money against the value of your investments.
It’s a flexible way to access liquidity when you need it, without sacrificing long-term investment growth. Wealthy Canadians have done this for a long time — it’s now becoming more broadly available. But portfolio lines of credit do come with a few risks that you should understand before you borrow.
See your portfolio as a cash source
A portfolio line of credit is a loan that lets you borrow money against the value of your investments, which serve as the collateral securing the loan. You can access cash when you need it while continuing to hold onto the underlying securities. It’s a way to see your portfolio not only as a savings or retirement fund, but as a source of liquidity for shorter-term goals.
How borrowing against your portfolio works
A portfolio line of credit is essentially a loan from your financial institution, with your investments serving as the guarantee that you’re able to pay it back. That makes it a secured line of credit, and it functions similarly to a home equity line of credit (HELOC).
You can borrow up to a certain percentage of the value of your portfolio. Because your investments are the collateral, you’ll typically be pre-approved for a portfolio line of credit.
These lines of credit tend to have lower interest rates than an unsecured personal line of credit, and can sometimes be cheaper than a HELOC. However, the interest rate is variable, not fixed.
Like a HELOC, a portfolio line of credit is a revolving loan, meaning you can borrow, pay off the loan, and borrow again without the need to re-apply for credit. You’ll pay interest only on the portion of the portfolio line of credit that you use: if you have no balance, there’s no interest to pay.
Keep in mind that your borrowing limit on a portfolio line of credit is set based on your portfolio’s total value. If your investments drop in value, any outstanding loan balance will represent a larger share of the total than it did before, bringing you closer to your credit limit.
In extreme scenarios, if you’re borrowing close to your maximum, market turbulence could push you over your credit limit. That would force your financial institution to demand that you quickly add funds to your account and get back under your credit limit, or they may liquidate your securities.
The cost of selling your investments
When you sell part of your portfolio, you aren’t simply covering the cost of whatever the investment proceeds are paying for. You may also face a tax bill and intangible costs associated with losing the potential for future gains.
Capital gains tax
If you’ve been investing through a non-registered account, you’ll face a capital gains tax on any investment growth you experienced while holding the securities. If you take money out of a registered account like a Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP), you’ll be taxed at your current tax rate.
The federal government taxes 50 per cent of capital gains, so if you purchased a stock five years ago and sold it for a profit of $200, you’ll be taxed on $100 of it. You pay additional income tax at your marginal rate for the taxable portion of your capital gains.
In contrast, if you borrowed money through a portfolio line of credit, your investment gains remain unrealized — so you get to keep 100 per cent of your capital working for you in the market while you use the value of your investments.
Opportunity cost and compounding
Time in the market has been proven to be an asset in its own right. The longer your money is in the market, the more it benefits from the power of compounding — where any investment gains, dividends, and interest you earn are reinvested right back into the market, growing your portfolio without any effort on your part.
Quick access to funds
It’s not a cost in the traditional sense, but when you liquidate some types of assets, it can take days to settle the transaction and move the money into your account — something that could slow you down if your transaction is time-sensitive, such as making a down payment deposit to secure a home purchase. When you borrow from a portfolio line of credit, the money is typically available for use much more quickly.
When interest is cheaper than selling
Let’s say you need $10,000 to fund a home renovation. Here’s an example of what that could cost if you were to borrow through a portfolio line of credit, versus the costs you could experience if you cashed out securities in a non-registered account.
Borrow through a portfolio line of credit
In this example, you borrow $10,000 through your portfolio line of credit at the interest rate of 4.95% (the prime rate as of 2026 — 4.45% — plus 0.5%), and are able to make monthly payments of $250, or $3,000 per year, toward paying it off.
Year | Portfolio line of credit balance | Interest accrued (Prime + 0.5%, or 4.95%) | Monthly payments paid each year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Year one | $10,000 | $495 | $250 ($3,000 a year) |
| Year two | $7,495 | $371 | $250 ($3,000 a year) |
| Year three | $4,866 | $240.86 | $250 ($3,000 a year) |
| Year four | $2,106.86 | $104.28 | $185 ($2,220 a year) |
You would pay $1,211.14 in interest, in addition to the original $10,000 to repay the loan, over four years (assuming the interest rate never changed).
Sell your stocks
Now let’s say you sell $10,000 in stocks that you’d held in a non-registered account to fund the renovation. You’d typically have to pay capital gains tax on half of that amount, or $5,000— for the sake of simplicity, this example assumes the full $10,000 is a capital gain (i.e. you originally paid little to nothing for the shares). Here is what the capital gains tax might look like for every federal income tax bracket (note that this doesn’t include the provincial tax rate, so the total tax payable would be higher):
Tax bracket | Tax rate | Capital gains tax paid on $5,000 |
|---|---|---|
| Taxable income that is $58,523 or less | 14% | $700 |
| Taxable income over $58,523 up to $117,045 | 20.5% | $1,025 |
| Taxable income over $117,045 up to $181,440 | 26% | $1,300 |
| Taxable income over $181,440 up to $258,482 | 29% | $1,450 |
| Taxable income over $258,482 | 33% | $1,650 |
Selling would also forfeit any future investment growth. Using the S&P 500 index’s average annualized return from 1928 to the third quarter of 2025, of 10.12%, here’s what that might look like over a four-year period:
Year one: $10,000 x 10.12% = $11,012
Year two: $11,012 x 10.12% = $12,126.41
Year three: $12,126.41 x 10.12% = $13,353.60
Year four: $13,353.60 x 10.12% = $14,704.98
So depending on your tax bracket, the cost of selling stocks could range from about $5,405 to $6,355 over the same four-year period.
Risks and considerations
Interest rates
The interest rate on a portfolio line of credit is variable, meaning it can go up if the Bank of Canada (BOC) hikes its overnight rate. That can make it much pricier to pay down the loan. As an example, at the height of the BOC’s rate hikes, when the overnight rate was 5% in mid-2023, and most lenders’ prime rates were 7.2%, a portfolio line of credit with a prime + 0.5% interest rate would have sat at 7.7% interest.
Market volatility
The credit limit on a portfolio line of credit is set based on the total value of your portfolio. If the market value of your assets drops, any outstanding loan balance you have will automatically creep closer to your credit limit, because the loan now makes up a larger share of the total.
It’s why a portfolio line of credit has a credit limit that tends to be more conservative: it’s meant to protect against big market swings compromising your loan. But if you’re borrowing at or close to your limit, a major market drop could drive your loan above it, triggering the need to add funds or risk having your securities liquidated.
Sticking to a responsible borrowing ratio rather than borrowing the maximum allowable amount can protect you from the possibility of a margin call during market turbulence.