UPDATE September 18th: Wealthsimple extended the registration window; it’s now October 15th. Still time to get free money if interested.

Summary: Wealthsimple announced a new promotion in an effort to drum up more business today. Ignoring the margin component, you could stand to make 1% cash back on new deposits, up to $2M. That’s up to $20k in free money.

The promotion is featured here, and the fine print is all here.

You may get the impression that the promotion is only targeting investors who trade on margin¹, something I don’t do myself². But no — they are paying 1% match for all money moved, margin or not. I think it’s worth taking a closer look if your current broker isn’t giving you free money to earn their business³. 1% cash back is a nice incentive, right?

The details of the promotion as I see it (you’re welcome):

• You must first register your intent to participate no later than September 5th October 15th.
• Once registered for the promotion, you have 30 days to initiate a fund transfer, and you have 90 days to complete it.
• You have to move at least $25k⁴, and 1% bonuses will be paid out to a maximum of $2M in assets moved
• Bonuses are paid out in 12 equal monthly instalments
• Removing more than 10% of what you transfer in within the year will cause your bonus to be reduced accordingly

As I still have a few RRIF accounts with QTrade (reasons why here), I thought, perhaps, I could score a bit MORE free cash. Unfortunately, Wealthsimple doesn’t support self-directed spousal RRIFs (and my call to support confirmed this) so I guess I’ll have to wait this one out. As it turns out, this is indeed possible, but spousal RRIFs cannot be opened as brand new accounts; they have to be converted from an already-existing spousal RRSP account. This means that you need special agent support to pull this off without issue. As I like free money, I’ll be giving this a try.

Anyway, if you’re new to the world of Wealthsimple, want to earn $25, and want to use my referral code, it’s here.

1. The promotion pays 2% match for margin accounts if there is active margin. They want to make money off of people who borrow money to invest which makes sense of course. ↩︎
2. My wife does, though, thanks to a spousal loan. I really should write a bit about that. It’s a nice way to get a bit of income-splitting in certain instances. ↩︎
3. My broker (Questrade) pays me a bonus every month as a thanks for moving my business there. ↩︎
4. $25k is the minimum amount that has to be moved before Wealthsimple will cover transfer-out fees as well ↩︎