Tag: transfer

Caution: Transferring RRIFs between brokers

RobHLeave a comment

DIY investors include a growing number of RRIF holders (like me). If you want a primer on RRIFs, you can read that here. There are some strange nuances involved with moving RRIFs between brokers which may not be obvious and are not documented anywhere — or if they are, I have yet to find where.

I’ve covered parts of this topic before, (here and here) but this post attempts to summarize the weirdness so you don’t get caught unaware. It is my belief that the cautions outlined below are applicable to ALL brokers, but happy to learn otherwise, just drop me a line at comments@moneyengineer.ca, I read all my mail.

For simplicity, I’m going to refer to the “sending” broker (the broker that currently manages the RRIF) and the “receiving” broker (the broker to whom you’re transferring those same assets).

Caution 1: A sending broker cannot transfer a RRIF unless it has fully paid out RRIF minimum for that year.

As RRIF aficionados will know, at the end of the calendar year, a new “RRIF minimum” amount is calculated by the broker based on the market value of the RRIF at that time and the age of either the RRIF owner or the spouse of the RRIF owner. This is a well-known fact. What is perhaps not so well known is that the broker who holds the RRIF at the start of the year is obligated to pay out the full amount of the RRIF minimum, even if that RRIF is transferred in the course of the year1.

This has implications, especially if you attempt the transfer early in a calendar year:

  • You are going to end up with “extra” cash that you weren’t expecting. You’ll have to be prepared to do something with that money, but what? Leave it as cash? Invest it in a HISA? Invest it in an all-in-one?
  • This early windfall also means that your potential tax-free growth2 is lost.

Caution 2: Waiting past end of November to initiate a RRIF transfer runs the risk of tying up your RRIF funds for multiple months

“Fine”, you think, “if I wait until late in the year to transfer my RRIF, I can avoid the problems inherent in Caution 1”. This is what I thought, too. I was, again, wrong.

There seems to be an industry-wide pause on RRIF transfers that starts in late November and lasts until January of the following year. I’ve seen more than one mention of it. Questrade’s message when I attempted to transfer-in my RRIF to them was

“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.”

It appears I got extremely unlucky: the transfer STARTED before November 28th, but failed to fully complete before the deadline. Performing a transfer is a multi-step process using a service called “ATON”34. You can read all about how ATON works over here.

In my case, it took until mid-February for the transfer to complete. During that time, the account was in limbo, and no payments could be made. For someone who expects to be paid monthly from a RRIF, this was a bit of a problem.

Advice: Initiate RRIF transfers before November 1.

This ought to give enough time for the transfer to complete before the cut-off date. And minimizes the amount and time you have “extra” money floating around. You can help make sure your transfer goes as expected:

  • Make sure the assets you hold are supported at both institutions. GICs are a frequent problem. So are bank-backed HISAs. If you hold assets like that, do yourself a favour and sell them before you initiate the transfer so that they are just cash.
  • If you hold fractional shares in your account5, get rid of them by selling off the fractions or buy more so that you have whole shares. From what I’ve read, fractional shares are a construct that is broker-specific and will cause issues when you attempt to transfer them.
  • Make sure you have enough cash in your RRIF so that the sending broker can pay out your RRIF minimum before the transfer begins.

Happy investing. If a transfer really goes astray, it looks like OBSI can help.

  1. This CRA link seems to be the one that states this. ↩︎
  2. Since the average gains of the market are positive, I’m always going to make the assumption that it’s better to be invested than not. You could of course get lucky and avoid a big market downturn because your RRIF cashed early, but that’s not how I think about investing. Time in the market is always better than timing the market, per Ken Fisher ↩︎
  3. “Account Transfer Online Notification”, apparently per https://cffim-fcmfi.ca/wp-content/uploads/aton-best-practices-guide-Jan-15-2021-v9.9.pdf ↩︎
  4. I am indebted to Financial Wisdom Forum users NorthernRaven and OptsyEagle for their help in understanding what went wrong in my case ↩︎
  5. Wealthsimple (for all shares/ETFs) and Questrade (for some US shares/ETFs) both offer this option. There may be others. ↩︎

Achievement: Down to two providers

RobHLeave a comment

I am trying to keep my retirement investments as simple as possible, really I am. And this week, I finally reduced the number of providers I use from three to two. Most of my retirement investments (RRIFs, TFSAs, non-registered) are now held with Questrade, excepting one RRIF account I hold with Wealthsimple.

I had intended to be down to two providers back in March 2025, but then I uncovered a wrinkle in how providers deal with RRIFs and I ended up keeping 4 RRIF accounts over at QTrade during 2025. These 4 accounts funded my RRIF minimum payments in 2025.

One RRIF was moved to Wealthsimple in early November 2025 and this was an altogether painless experience, and I’ve been enjoying free money every month from Wealthsimple for my troubles. A good deal.

I waited until late November 2025 (November 26th, to be exact) before starting the transfer exercise from QTrade to Questrade for the remaining three RRIFs. And it took until this week (February 6th, 2026) before the assets finally showed up. That’s 72 days, a little over 10 weeks. Here’s a timeline:

  • November 26th: Submitted paperwork electronically to Questrade
  • On December 2nd, QTrade charged me the $150 transfer out fee on each account (plus tax).
  • On December 8th, I got the following message from Questrade: “Please be advised that RRIF/LIF account transfers are subject to the industry-wide cut-off date, November 28, 2025. f you would like to proceed with your transfer request, we require a document showing that the RRIF/LIF minimum payment was made for the year 2025.”
  • I submitted this proof (which, as I mentioned previously, was more than a little annoying) but nothing happened. After many calls to both Questrade and QTrade, I gathered that transfers at this point in the year were impossible. Of course, QTrade had already charged me the $150 plus tax transfer out fee.
  • In the new year, I resumed hassling Questrade and QTrade support for updates. This was made more complicated by a free money promotion offered by Questrade, which meant their support desk, shaky at the best of times, became completely overwhelmed. I saw a series of cryptic messages in my transfer update that indicated somebody wasn’t responding to a followup. These cryptic messages disappeared from my status update last week, which I either took to mean progress or an attempt to cover up inept practices, I haven’t decided which yet.
  • Anyway, without much fanfare, the assets appeared in my RRIF accounts on Friday, February 6th. My transfer status still shows “in progress”, for what it’s worth.

Anyway, I’m happy this latest transfer is done, but there’s still some tidying up I have to do:

  • I have to make sure I know what Questrade will use for RRIF minimum for the newly moved accounts. That’s another call to support, regrettably. And since I missed a month of payments, I have to figure out how to catch up.
  • I have to make sure Questrade refunds me the transfer out fees. I uploaded the documentation (which, I note, Wealthsimple does not require) to “prove” I was charged $1501.
  • I will check (again) to ensure all these RRIF accounts have a properly documented successor. That’s really important.

This last go-round was especially unsatisfactory since I got no free money out of it, which is really quite galling given how much is being thrown around these days2.

Anyway, it’s nice to have a simpler view of my portfolio; Passiv gives me a unified view across Wealthsimple and Questrade, but since the relationship between Questrade and Passiv has come to an end, I’m not sure what that will entail once my free “elite” subscription ends in March.

  1. Since every broker does this, this is 100% an exercise to prevent refunds to the unwary. . ↩︎
  2. Just search this site for “free money” if you don’t believe me. ↩︎