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Email this8:17 pm
August 4, 2010
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Norman1 said
4420 - $0.811 - ATON Movement Charge to both deliverer and receiver for a CDSX trade generated by ATON
4430 - $0.1351 ATON Confirmed Asset Charge to both deliverer and receiver per confirmed assetATON fees will only be around $2 from each side for a simple one-item ATON transfer of a cash balance: $0.91 + $0.135.
For an account with 30 CDS-handled holdings, it will be $0.91 + 30 * ($0.135 + $0.81) = $29.26 from both institutions.
Is that 4420 charge ($0.811) actually per delivered position? There's already the 4430 charge for confirmed asset lines (which will presumably be delivered), and the 4420 wording is for "CDSX trade generated by ATON". Might it only be charged for those positions where the request is to sell to cash, either because it is unsupported by the receiver or otherwise marked as "sell for cash"? That would bring the example down to as low as $4.96 per side if all positions came across in-kind, as would likely be common?
In any case, there's legitimate questions about internal costs and resources for transfers, whether capping or eliminating fees might spur investment in more efficient procedures, whether a government mandate is the right way to achieve this, or whatever.
I think the less self-serving part of the fintech submissions involves transfer times. My non-ATON registered transfers over the years (Hubert, Oaken, bank or life insurance GRRSP) have generally involved a fax from acquirer to relinquisher, and a paper cheque via Canada Post coming back. Certainly some of these institutions seem to internally process such transactions with, shall we say, great deliberation (cough, Canada Life, cough), and one's registered funds can be in limbo for potentially a few weeks. It would be nice if there had been some sort of incentive to develop a process to bundle the required paperwork and an electronic payment together to avoid actually shipping paper via mail, or other incentives to speed up this process, but given the reporting and institutional inertia, I'm not terribly hopeful.
5:32 am
November 18, 2017
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Saying people ought to look out for themselves doesn't apply when the terms and conditions change on them after their cash is in the till!
Saying people should take care in selecting places to deposit cash ignores the fact that in most cases there's no way to tell if there's financial risk at any particular institution until it's too late. That's different in equity markets; "buyer beware" is the norm, as are large, unpredictable losses. Look at recent gold prices! (I wonder whether the ups and downs in US trade policy provide good insider trading opportunities for US politicians and connected friends of insiders...)
This reminds me of US right-wingers wanting to let people make their own choices for health care or primary/secondary schooling - most people aren't in a position to understand their own medical issues or move to where a good school is available. And it's been proven world-wide that deterrent fees for health care increase costs and morbidity. The beneficiaries of user-choice policies
If the financial institutions don't want "rate-shoppers" bouncing their dollars around, why do they offer promos? They know they sometimes have to pay more for short-term money.
RetirEd
6:05 am
April 27, 2017
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Wealthsimple and IBKR somehow manage transfers out of their brokerages without charging a cent, so the argument of “poor us are incurring massive costs which needs to be covered” is obvious bs. In reality these charges are being increased when technology is improving as an anticompetitive measure.
8:48 am
March 15, 2019
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What do you think?
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politic.....-minister/
8:51 am
April 6, 2013
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NorthernRaven said
Is that 4420 charge ($0.811) actually per delivered position? There's already the 4430 charge for confirmed asset lines (which will presumably be delivered), and the 4420 wording is for "CDSX trade generated by ATON". Might it only be charged for those positions where the request is to sell to cash, either because it is unsupported by the receiver or otherwise marked as "sell for cash"? That would bring the example down to as low as $4.96 per side if all positions came across in-kind, as would likely be common?
Yes, that $0.81 charge is for each delivered CDS-eligible position. That is for the non-exchange trades that ATON generates and sends to Canadian Depository for Securities (CDS) to actually deliver the securities to the receiver's dealer account there.
ATON helps with the back and forth (steps 1, 2, and 3 in ATON – Account Transfer Online Notification) between the deliverer and receiver to agree on the assets to be transferred.
Once the deliverer and receiver agree, ATON will generated the trades for CDS (for Canadian securities), DTC (for US securities), and FundSERV (for mutual funds) to actually move the assets that are there (step 4). Other assets in the transfer are tracked by ATON but have to be moved by other means.
It is quite a bit of overhead. In addition to a hookup to ATON, the participants need settlement accounts at CDS, DTC, and FundSERV. All that is hard to justify for a smaller institution that just offers GIC's.
National Bank Direct Brokerage shares that most of its incoming transfers are non-ATON:
Transfers via non-ATON users
Transfers coming from institutions that do not participate in the ATON system must be processed manually. This represents about 60% of requests.
The estimated timelines for receiving assets (once the transfer request is sent to the delivering institution or a GIC expires) are as follows:
Banks / Caisses
populairesMutual fund
companiesTrusts / Insurance
companiesEmployers / Pension funds /
Government agencies10-20 days 10-20 days 10-20 days 20-40 days
9:11 am
April 6, 2013
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NorthernRaven said
…
I think the less self-serving part of the fintech submissions involves transfer times. My non-ATON registered transfers over the years (Hubert, Oaken, bank or life insurance GRRSP) have generally involved a fax from acquirer to relinquisher, and a paper cheque via Canada Post coming back. Certainly some of these institutions seem to internally process such transactions with, shall we say, great deliberation (cough, Canada Life, cough), and one's registered funds can be in limbo for potentially a few weeks. It would be nice if there had been some sort of incentive to develop a process to bundle the required paperwork and an electronic payment together to avoid actually shipping paper via mail, or other incentives to speed up this process, but given the reporting and institutional inertia, I'm not terribly hopeful.
Faxes and mailed paper cheques don't require any additional agreement from the financial institutions.
Payments Canada has already upgraded wire transfers to be able to include richer data with the transfer. Real-time Rail transfers will be able to carry richer data.
That richer data cannot be a PDF or scan of a transfer from. Everyone needs to agree what that richer ISO 20022 data will be for something like an RRSP transfer.
10:40 am
September 11, 2013
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RetirEd, when an institution is increasing or bringing in a new fee there is always advance notice so you can move your stuff out before that, so not buying the victim narrative on that one.
11:04 am
August 4, 2010
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Norman1 said
Yes, that $0.81 charge is for each delivered CDS-eligible position. That is for the non-exchange trades that ATON generates and sends to Canadian Depository for Securities (CDS) to actually deliver the securities to the receiver's dealer account there.Once the deliverer and receiver agree, ATON will generated the trades for CDS (for Canadian securities), DTC (for US securities), and FundSERV (for mutual funds) to actually move the assets that are there (step 4). Other assets in the transfer are tracked by ATON but have to be moved by other means.
Yeah, I was wondering if "trade" meant something like "clearing/registration (without market component) necessary to transfer item between participants".
Norman1 said
Faxes and mailed paper cheques don't require any additional agreement from the financial institutions.Payments Canada has already upgraded wire transfers to be able to include richer data with the transfer. Real-time Rail transfers will be able to carry richer data.
That richer data cannot be a PDF or scan of a transfer from. Everyone needs to agree what that richer ISO 20022 data will be for something like an RRSP transfer.
As someone who in a previous life had at least tangential involvement in data formatting and production agreements among multiple agencies, I feel the pain of that "needs to agree"... 🙂
I remember had an EQ->Wealthsimple FHSA transfer in the last couple of years that went amazingly quickly. I assumed it was just transfer desks with time on their hands and a quick intra-Toronto cheque delivery, but I suppose some of the sprightlier institutions could be using mutually agreed-upon electronic alternatives.
I had a rather bollixed TFSA transfer from Wealthsimple to Hubert recently, and one of the things that came up from Wealthsimple was whether Hubert supported "A$M", which appears to be FundServ's ad-hoc dealer money transfer program, which supports "non-trade instructions" and lists in-cash registered transfers as a use-case. So Wealthsimple (and perhaps that incoming EQ FHSA) may have the capability to do registered cash transfers electronically is some cases. Unfortunately, Hubert is still reliant on Red River carts to Selkirk (although their customer service remains excellent), so that was still a paper cheque.
1:11 pm
April 27, 2017
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Bill said
RetirEd, when an institution is increasing or bringing in a new fee there is always advance notice so you can move your stuff out before that, so not buying the victim narrative on that one.
TD Direct Investing raised its RRSP and TFSA transfer-out fees from $75 to $150 per account, effective July 1, 2025. They did announce the change on their website in locations accessible to clients a few weeks prior (around mid-May 2025) via a fee schedule update, but it was done “quietly” without individual client notices or emails. As of May 2025 I was with TDDI and received no direct communication from them whatsoever.
Everybody knows that people don’t just reread the terms daily. The fee was escalated very deliberately. They and others who practice this type of underhand nonsense should be held to account. Not OK.
They are not alone using this kind of predatory and uncompetitive behaviour.
https://money.ca/investing/hik.....-exit-fees
P.S. looks like EQ does not charge exit fees either. Obviously better run organizations don’t need to try and stifle the market
2:33 pm
March 30, 2017
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To me, when they offer outsized promo to attract new customers, its only sensible that they will charge a fee if one decides to move their account, nothing wrong with that.
They are businesses, not charities. Speaking of that, so called charities are some of the worst run organizations, with less than 50cents of the donation actually goes to actually benefit the needy. Take a look at how much CEO of united way makes a year...
3:14 pm
August 4, 2010
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mordko said
TD Direct Investing raised its RRSP and TFSA transfer-out fees from $75 to $150 per account, effective July 1, 2025. They did announce the change on their website in locations accessible to clients a few weeks prior (around mid-May 2025) via a fee schedule update, but it was done “quietly” without individual client notices or emails. As of May 2025 I was with TDDI and received no direct communication from them whatsoever.P.S. looks like EQ does not charge exit fees either. Obviously better run organizations don’t need to try and stifle the market
I'm not sure this is correct? I'm a little too lazy to dig for old statements or archived fee pages, but I'm almost certain that as far back as late 2023 when I did TDDI->Wealthsimple transfers they were at the $150 (plus tax) level, and had been for awhile before that? Usually the brokerages are pretty much in lockstep on their transfer out fees (now $150), and Wealthsimple is the only one I know that doesn't charge them (maybe IBKR?).
Non-brokerage registered transfers (banks, CUs, GRRSPs at Life Cos) are usually in the $50-75 range, where they exist. EQ/Oaken/Peoples/Hubert are all no-fee institutions; Tangerine was but brought in a transfer-out fee years ago. Given the slow progress and lack of return during a registered transfer, I avoid doing much of that, but I have had GICs at all of those in the last 15 years (mostly Oaken and a bit of Hubert the last few years). These non-brokerage transfers are probably smaller average amounts than someone's brokerage portfolio, and some combination of costs and desire for stickiness / competitive inertia has the brokerages charging the higher rate.
3:48 pm
March 17, 2018
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NorthernRaven said
Non-brokerage registered transfers (banks, CUs, GRRSPs at Life Cos) are usually in the $50-75 range, where they exist. EQ/Oaken/Peoples/Hubert are all no-fee institutions; .
Also Achieva and Manulife Bank don't presently charge transfer out fees
3:50 pm
August 4, 2010
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Did a quick archive check, and TDDI's transfer fee was $150 in 2020, and $135 as long ago as March 2016.
I think you meant TD's banking side (TD Canada Trust), not the TDDI brokerage side. They did a bunch of changes last year (I remember the bump in the waiver amount on my chequing account), and one apparently was that nasty $75->$150 jump in transfer out fees, locking their customers even tighter to overpriced mutual funds or underwhelming savings interest... 🙂
6:51 pm
September 11, 2013
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That's interesting, mordko, and not my experience at all with TDDI, been with them for a few decades now. I've always received notice, either in the general mail to everyone on various topics when I log in to Webroker or to my email account on file, if there is a new fees and commissions schedule coming out.
It would also be against their published policy, in their TDDI Commission Schedule and Statement of Disclosure of Rates and Fees, the latest of which includes in the small print near the end of it "commissions and interest rates are subject to change without notice. All other rates and fees are subject to change upon 60 days prior notice".
I've never found it necessary to review any institution's fees, etc on a regular basis to see if there's a change, I've always been notified ahead of time one way or the other (even paper snail mail sometimes in the old days) when there are upcoming changes. Maybe you can contact TDDI to let them know you are being missed somehow.
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