There’s no charge for investments up to
$5,000, and no trading commissions or ad-
ministration fees. Over $5,000, investors
pay a management fee ranging from 0.35
to 0.5 percent based on the investment
amount. The only other fees are for specif-
ic ETFs used in the portfolio. “So all in all,
you’re looking at 60 to 75 basis points for a
fully-managed portfolio and that compares
to the average Canadian who’s paying 2.5
percent for a mutual fund,” Katchen said.
Though Wealthsimple is geared to all in-
vestors — their youngest is 18 and their
oldest is 92 — there’s no question that
their investment model is appealing to
younger clients. About 90 percent of their
investors are under the age of 50, which
Katchen said is the opposite of the rest
of the industry. Wealthsimple clients are
more likely to be thinking about investing
in a first home than choosing their retire-
ment goals. Educating their clients is an
important part of their service, evident in
the content available on their website and
blog topics that range from “What Drake
can teach 50 Cent about his finances” to
“Thinking inside the box: fallacies of con-
do investment”.
“We publish this stuff and it creates tre-
mendous amounts of controversy but it’s
totally useful information because these
are the decisions our clients are facing at
this times in their lives,” Katchen said. “It’s
told in an interesting way and that’s the
thing that we do. We make an otherwise
stale topic (for a large portion of millenni-
als) engaging and exciting.We’re constant-
ly trying to create content that’s useful and
actionable in our clients’ lives.”
They even offer opportunities for compa-
nies to book a Lunch & Learn session for
their team. Members of the Wealthsim-
ple team will arrive, “awesome lunch” in
OCTOBER 2015
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