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Our goal when we started Wealthsimple was to democratize financial wisdom. To take the kind of sophisticated tools that have always been protected by middlemen and gatekeepers and make them available to everyone in the simplest way possible. We wanted to prove that for anyone who is able to do a few simple things—start investing early, be consistent, avoid high fees—growing wealth isn’t actually that hard. And we wondered, Why do we have account minimums? Shouldn’t everyone who wants to do the smart thing with his or her money be able to?

So today, we’re officially lowering our account minimum to $0 and bringing smart investing to everyone. Wealthsimple is the first investment company in Canada to eliminate account minimums completely.

How It Works

OK, get ready for a little finance talk. Last year, we acquired the brokerage firm ShareOwner. One of the benefits of that acquisition is that, thanks to our innovative technology, we are now able to build a portfolio using fractional shares. We’re the only firm in Canada that can do that. Why does this make a difference? Let’s say you have $100 to invest. If you were using a traditional firm, that sum would buy just about one share of VTI (Vanguard Total Stock Market index, one of the 10 exchange-traded funds we use in our portfolios). One share of VTI wouldn’t be a very diversified portfolio, but you couldn’t really do more than that with just $100. With fractional shares, you can buy $10 of VTI plus a mix of other investments to build a fully diversified portfolio.

This innovative technology is used across all new Wealthsimple accounts. The result is an optimal, fully diversified portfolio for an account of any size, whether you’re investing $100, $10,000, or $1,000,000.

Why We’re Doing It

First, because it’s why we got into the business in the first place. As we said, historically, good investment advice has been locked behind a wall. It was available only to people with more than $100,000—and often more than $250,000—to invest. We think that’s wrong. We want to be there for clients who are just starting out in their careers as much as for those who’ve already built a nest egg. It’s exactly those young investors who have the most to gain by starting early.

Second, because we’re new, and we do things a little bit differently. While we’re pretty confident that once you work with us, you’ll never want to invest with a bank again, we also know we need to earn that trust. Now you can experiment, get to know what we do without putting all your savings in one place. And then invest more with us once you realize how much less expensive, how much simpler and how much more effective we are.

After all, though over 10,000 Canadians already trust us with their investments, we want to bring smart investing to everyone. It’s never been easier to open an account with Wealthsimple. Get started today.

Written By

Wealthsimple

Wealthsimple uses technology and smart, friendly humans to help you grow and manage your money. Invest, save, trade, and even do your taxes in a better, simpler way.