Questwealth Vs. Wealthsimple (Detailed Comparison) 

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Questwealth

Questwealth and Wealthsimple are top wealth (investment) management companies in Canada.

They are in the service of providing their clients with great investment options. More so, they offer financial advice and help them manage their portfolios. However, they use Robo-advisers to offer cheaper and faster services to their clients more than most human financial advisers can do.

What is a Robo Adviser?

A Robo adviser is simply a robotic wealth or investment manager. They are algorithms, coded in software by programmers to offer financial advice with little or no human intervention.

These algorithms are what help it to analyze, manage and assign assets to clients automatically.

Choosing between the two can be harder than you think. Although they may have some common features, there have ones too that set them apart.

Now, let us look at what these two Robo-advisers have to offer.

Questwealth

Questwealth, now commonly known as Questrade Wealth Management gives Canadian investors everything a traditional financial institution cannot.

From individuals to businesses and corporations, they help to empower them financially.

They offer a wide range of services such as investment fund management, portfolio management, exempt market dealing etc.

Wealthsimple

Wealthsimple works through its affiliates like Wealthsimple Trade, Wealthsimple invest, Wealthsimple Crypto, Wealthsimple Cash and Wealthsimple Tax.

It uses its affiliates to provide Canadians with many investment services and a wide range of financial products.

Some of the services they offer include portfolio management, stocking trading, fund management, investment in crypto-assets, and more.

Questwealth and Wealthsimple both offer great features to their clients. Below are some of them:

Features

 

Questwealth

 

Wealthsimple

Accessibility

 

Website, mobile app,  phone, email, virtual chat

 

Phone, email support, website, mobile app

Account types

TFSA, RRSP, Margin, RESP,  LIRA,  RIF,  LIF etc.

TFSA, RRSP, RESP, RRIF, LIRA, Joint & Business account

Investment strategy

Active and passive managed portfolios

Passive

 

Portfolio Management fees

0.20% – 0.25%

(0.20% after $100,000)

0.4-0.5%

Expert financial advice

Human and Robo-adviser

 

Human and Robo-adviser

 

Account transfer fees

 

 Covers your transfer in fees for up to $150 per account

$50 – $150 but reimburses fee if you transfer > $5000

Account minimum

$1,000

$0

 

Trade commissions

Yes. Depending on the product

Free

 

Computing platforms

 

Website, iOS, Android

Website, iOS, Android

Account inactivity fees

Discontinued

None

 

How To Invest?

Investment management companies like Questwealth and Wealthsimple are also laden with investment strategies that can make your money work better for you.

Questwealth investment plan

With Questwealth portfolios, it’s rather easier to attain your investment goals; but then, how do you start?

  • Choose the right portfolio (Self-directing investing or Questwealth portfolio)

  • Open accounts

  • Choose how to fund

  • Monitor and review your investment

 Before using Questwealth to invest, there are few things you have to know and easy steps to take for better experience and services:

  • Add your investment goals to get the best kind of portfolio designed for your needs.

  • Deposit money into the newly open account to start investing.

  • Relax; no need to worry. Once your investment starts counting, just watch it grow.

  • More so, if in case, there is a need to change your portfolio to suit your status, you can easily do so with ease.

  • You can easily check your balance online and access your investment any time, any day. The service is 24/7.

  • Questwealth will not leave you in the dark. They want you to know what is happening with your money. Therefore, you will a monthly statement as regards your investment growth and market.

Questwealth investments are easy to start, manage and review.

Wealthsimple investment plan

With the Wealthsimple investment plan, you experience no commissions on trade or account minimums. In addition, you can easily search and track your stocks with your watch list.

Investing in Wealthsimple is easy but you need to:

  • Provide them with more information about your financial goals by answering a few questions.

  • Choose the right portfolio, preferably, the one with the right amount of risk.

  • Link your bank account. Make a deposit. Start investing.

When investing in Wealthsimple, it may be good to know that:

  • Their investing strategies are not much. It focuses on ETFs and Stocks for now. However, the good news is that it offers you the opportunity to diversify.

Diversifying your investments eliminate great loss. Since you do not risk everything in one endeavor, you always have other opportunities to make a profit.

Therefore, Wealthsimple will help invest your money in ETFs and spread it over the entire Stock market. This way, you can easily maximize returns.

  • Peradventure, you find it hard to choose which investment strategy that best suits your risk appetite Wealthsimple will help.

In addition to that, they will build a portfolio that will best meet your financial goals.

Questwealth

Comparison between Questwealth and Wealthsimple

Investment strategy

Two kinds of portfolios are available in Questwealth. The first one is self-directing investing (passive) and the second one is the Questwealth portfolio (active).

With self-directing investing, you build your own portfolio for less. You also benefit from the low commission offer, no account opening fees, no annual RRSP or TFSA account fees and free ETFs commissions.

With their active investing plan, you just have to sit back and watch your investments grow. The finance experts/portfolio managers help you do all the work while you pay a fee for the services.

On the other hand, Wealthsimple offers only a passive investing strategy. They believe more in tracking the market than beating it.

It is a good option for investors who may want to be in control of their portfolios. More so, with the ability to diversify your portfolios, maximizing returns is high.

However, those that may want to put the responsibilities on the neck of the portfolio managers have to look somewhere else; like Questwealth.

Investment products

The fact that Questwealth offers both active and passive investment strategies, maybe one of the reasons it has more to offer than Wealthsimple.

Questwealth offers Stocks, Options, ETFs, Bonds, IPOs, and GICs, Precious metals, Mutual Funds and more.  You have more choices to make with their loaded investment products.

Wealthsimple has limited options. They only offer Stocks and ETFs. Fortunately, they offer opportunities for diversification as previously mentioned.

However, it only has some of the Canadian and U.S. Stocks and ETFs listed amidst thousands of assets available.

Below are the investment product offers and their pricing.

The product offers and pricing

Investment products

Questwealth

 

Wealthsimple

Stocks

1¢ /share (min. $4.95 to max. $9.95)

$0

 

Options

$9.95 + $1/contract

 

Not available

Foreign Exchange

as low as 0.8 pips

 

Not available

ETFs

Free to buy, $4.95 minimum per trade

 

Free ($0)

Bonds

min. of $5,000

 

Not available

IPOs

min. of $5,000

 

Not available

CFDs

 

 

Not available

International equities

1% fee

Not available

 

Mutual funds

$9.95

 

Not available

GICs

min. of $5,000

 

Not available

 

Precious metals

$19.95 USD/trade

Not available

 

Currency (US/CDN) conversion

Not available

 

1.5%

Trading fees

When you want to invest in Questwealth, you have to deposit into your account a minimum of $1000. That seems huge, and there is even more.

Trading on Questwealth also attracts trade commissions. The commission to pay depends on the investment product you choose.

For example, you pay a minimum fee of $4.95 on ETFs and $9.95 on mutual funds whenever you trade (buying or selling).

Nevertheless, the good thing here is that there is no currency (US/CDN) conversion.

To further explain this, when you trade on the listed U.S Stocks and ETFs, there will not be any need to convert from USD to CAD. This will save you some bucks as it eliminates currency conversion fees.

For Wealthsimple, they offer free trade. They are the only Canadian brokerage that offers free trading.

It requires no minimum account balance, so you can even start trading with $1 or as much as you can deposit.

In the same vein, you pay a $0 trading commission. You can purchase, trade and sell your assets at no extra cost at all. That is an attractive perk.

You may wonder just as many investors, if there is any catch, as it seems too good to be true. Well, there is.

Wealthsimple offers a 1.5% currency conversion fee, unlike Questwealth. This applies to whether you are converting from USD to CAD or from CAD to USD.

You just have to pay them a little for the free services they offer.

More so, if you are trading on mutual funds, you will pay a one-time trading fee of $50 regardless of how much you are investing.

Financial advisory type

Robo advisors help to personalize the investor’s portfolio by analyzing their data. Both Questwealth and Wealthsimple both use Robo-advisers.

While it may seem cheaper and faster, it also lacks the realness to a human opinion and advice. Robo advice is limited to the algorithm it is programmed with.

Fortunately, they both run a hybrid platform, unlike many other Robo-advisers. That means, Questwealth and Wealthsimple, give you both humans and automated advice.

For any questions you may have, there are groups of financial experts ready to put you through it. 

With the benefits of human and Robo-advisers combined, investors now have more than one way to seek financial advice.

Socially Responsible Investing

Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) allows investors to invest in a world that is valuable to them.

To explain this further, it means investing in companies you believe to have an edge in society and laden with the responsibility to make the world a better place.

For example, Questwealth and Wealthsimple can have their portfolios spread across low carbon emissions or solar energy companies but not otherwise.

That means it will not support business that does not influence positively on the society like gambling, weapons or tobacco.

That is because the companies that take into consideration from the SRI point of view are not those that fall short of environmental impact, social and governance concerns.

Therefore, for those who hold their values in high regard, both platforms are welcoming.

As regarding SRI management fees:

Questwealth offers a low management fee for SRI Portfolios just like other Questwealth Portfolios.

For Questwealth, you can get regular ETF MERs from 0.17% to 0.22% and 0.21% to 0.35% for SRI portfolios. However, your minimum account balance is $1,000.

For Wealthsimple, both SRI portfolios and non-SRI portfolios have the same fee charges. Nevertheless, their ETFs fee varies. Managed ETFs charges 0.22% to 0.32% on average, while regular ETFs charges 0.1%.

For Wealthsimple SRI, your account minimum should be £5,000.

On a general note, the SRI portfolio uses SRI-focused ETFs. It offers investors lower fees with more diversification.

Rewards and promotions

One way Questwealth helps its investors to lower cost is through rewards programs and promotions.

To earn rewards, you simply have to let your friends know about Questwealth. The more referrals you get, the more you earn.

  • Once you create an account with Questwealth, they will assign you a unique Qpass key/code.

  • When you refer a friend, he/she must enter the Qpass code when signing up for the reward to apply.

  • You get $25 for every referral that opens an account.

  • You also, get $50 for every third referral.

Your friend can also earn rewards if they open a self-directed account. They have to fund their account. The more they deposit the more bonuses they earn.

  • $1,000 deposit: $25 bonus

  • $10,000 deposit: $50 bonus

  • $25,000 deposit: $75 bonus

  • $50,000 deposit: $100 bonus

  • $100,000 deposit: $250 bonus

However, they have up to 90 days to reach the highest reward level.

Questwealth Rewards

Again, for more Questwealth rewards you have to connect with your family. This will help keep fees within the family circle at bay.

To do so:

  • Link your account with that of relatives or close friends.

  • That will jointly qualify those in the family circle for lower fees.

They also offer other promotions and incentives.

Wealthsimple also has some rewarding offers for its investors. Join Wealthsimple and enjoy the investing offers. To get more from the “refer a friend” offer:

  • Log into your account.

  • You can invite your friends through your profile. Simply tap “Earn Rewards” on your mobile app or visit the “Invite Area” through the web.

  • Alternatively, you can invite your friends and families with your referral link. You can find your link on the rewards page.

One good thing about this is that Wealthsimple gives you the privilege to track the performance of your referrals.

  • When your referral signs up with your link, they will immediately receive $10,000 of additional assets managed free into their account.

  • When they deposit At least $10 into their newly opened Wealthsimple account, you also get $10,000 of additional assets managed free into your account.

The $10,000 of additional assets managed free you (the referee) and the referral gets is valid for 12 months.

For other exciting promotions offered by Wealthsimple, you can check them up here.

Security

Any investor would like to know if his /her investments are in safer hands. With their accounts, money and personal information well protected.

So, if you have ever asked this question “is Questwealth or Wealthsimple safe?” you are not alone but the answer is YES. It is safe to invest in any of them.

Questwealth is a registered member of the Canadian Investor Protection Fund (CIPF) and Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC).

To ensure you get more protection for your cash and investments, they insured all its accounts up to $10 million.

This includes both self-directing and managed accounts. Even if they go out of business, the insurance will cover everyone.

In addition, your account is encrypted and securely stored with PIN, touch/face ID, last login alerts etc.

Wealthsimple cannot be wrong to hold over $3 billion in assets for clients. That simply shows investors trust their security measures.  

Wealthsimple Trade is also a member of IIROC and (CIPF) through Canadian ShareOwner Investments Inc.

Therefore, your personal information and account are safe too. With Encryption (256-bit SSL/TLS certificate) and backups, it is hard to risk your data.

Which one is better to invest in?

Questwealth and Wealthsimple have some advantages that make them stand out over the other.

For example, if you want to go into full investing and save currency conversion fees, then Questwealth offers a better option.

However, if you want to invest with lower fees and only on ETFs and Stocks, then Wealthsimple is for you.

So before you start investing in any of them, weigh the options available, the risks, management fees, Return on Investment and so on.

We have taken it upon ourselves to give you the best evaluation. It is up to give to know which one that best meets your investment needs.

Thanks for reading, please let me know your thoughts and comments below. 

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