As previously noted, I’m in the process of closing off my last accounts with QTrade. No particular reason I did that other than to chase free money and to reduce complexity by reducing the number of brokers I deal with.

There were four RRIF accounts to move. I moved my own RRIF account to Wealthsimple in late October to take advantage of (you guessed it) free money, which left 3 other accounts to move to Questrade before the end of the year.

The Wealthsimple transfer was really simple, initiated online in about 5 minutes, requiring no follow-up on my part, and completed inside of 2 weeks. Wealthsimple even went so far as to proactively refund the $150 transfer out fee charged by QTrade. I received my first free money payment 2 weeks ago. Couldn’t have been easier.

For the last three RRIF accounts, I waited until my November RRIF payments had been made from QTrade in the normal way before initiating the transfer to Questrade¹ on November 30th. But of course, for these three, there was a problem. Questrade is famously opaque in its transfer out messaging, but I provide the message provided from them verbatim:

Please be advised that RRIF/LIF account transfers are subject to the industry-wide cut-off date, November 28, 2025. This cut-off date is not specific to Questrade, but is arranged and agreed upon by all Canadian financial institutions to ensure yearly payments are made in an orderly and timely manner to all account holders.

After a number of phone calls to both QTrade and Questrade, it seems that the meaning of the above message is that RRIF transfers between brokers are not possible during the month of December. I found a few references to similar problems with different brokers from years gone by.

Anyway, that’s yet another bit of weirdness associated with RRIFs that I’ve encountered:

• That you should not expect a DPSP to move to a RRIF immediately
• That transferring out a RRIF requires the sending institution to pay out the RRIF minimum payment for the year in full²
• And now, that transferring out a RRIF cannot be done during the month of December

I could uncover no reason for why this restriction exists³, but I’m guessing it was once a problem in the days of manual calculations and mainframes that has never been changed. I am hoping at this point that the first week of the new year will get my RRIF moving again, but I don’t have any certainty that this will be the case.

Anyway, dear readers, take note: if you’re planning on moving a RRIF, make sure you initiate it by the beginning of November! And if anyone out there can tell me the reason, happy to be educated. Just drop me a line at comments@moneyengineer.ca.

1. You may wonder why I didn’t just move all my accounts to Wealthsimple. It was because they didn’t (at the time) support spousal RRIFs for DIY investors. They do now. Part of me wonders if Wealthsimple is going to end up with this money. ↩︎
2. Even if you take monthly payments from your RRIF as I do ↩︎
3. And, having exceeded the recommended annual exposure to clueless level one support agents, I thought the better of it for my mental health. ↩︎