Wealthsimple HISA | General financial discussion | Discussion forum

I use wealthsimple for trading equities, doing my income tax, and have also taken advantage of the 4percent savings account. I have a good experience overall, i have had to call customer service when i was setting my trading account up, they were very helpful

I personally wouldn't recommend depositing more than 300K, because that's the extent of their CDIC protection.

Another benefit of having 100K or more combined in any of the WealthSimple accounts is moving to the Premium tier level. This entitles you to USD accounts ( must opt in ) without paying the 10.00 a month.

https://help.wealthsimple.com/hc/en-ca/articles/14557325627803

1nt2Save said

I have had an account with wealthsimple for a couple years now they have been great to deal with. Sometimes I think that orders do not get filled as good as with other brokers but they do not charge any commissions so it's fine with me since I use them for longer term holds. Instead of their savings account I buy the ETF's CASH or PSA they pay dividends based around the BoC rate 4.8-5% right now. You can buy and sell whenever you want just like any equity.  

I just read on RFD that Wealthsimple is offering dividend reinvestment, which should work even for HISA ETF's like CASH or PSA. This is useful to be able to avoid dealing with the monthly distributions, since fractional shares have to be a minimum of 1.00. You can enable it under
Profile > Account > choose the account and Enable

WS are not a CDIC member and thus the CDIC coverage they offer is really from the banks they keep your $ at/with according to their documentation (https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-ca/magazine/cdic-cash-x3). So, I can only assume that if you're already maxed out CDIC-wise at the banks they use, those WS $ of yours are not necessarily covered ...

Norman1 said
According to their legal terms, the Wealthsimple Cash account balances are held by WealthSimple at CDIC members in trust for the account holders:

Wealthsimple Cash

Our Cash product is offered by Wealthsimple Investments Inc. (“WSII”), a member of the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada, and Wealthsimple Payments Inc., a FINTRAC registered money services business. The funds you add to a Cash account (the “Funds”) are ultimately held securely in trust with a single or multiple members of the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation (“CDIC”). CDIC protects eligible deposits held at CDIC member institutions in case of a member institution’s failure. Wealthsimple Payments Inc. and WSII are not CDIC member institutions. Under the trust framework, CDIC insures eligible cash balances up to $100,000 per beneficiary, per member institution, provided certain disclosure rules are met. Coverage is free and automatic. Learn more about how CDIC protection works. Funds may be spread across multiple different CDIC members in order to extend the CDIC coverage to up to $300,000 in eligible deposits. Any interest earned on the Funds is owned by WSII. The Funds are settled with any CDIC member(s) one business day following the date that Funds are reflected in the Account.

That would make the Wealthsimple Cash balances separate deposits from any balances the account holders have directly with the same CDIC members.  

In my view, "per member institution" is key here since WS is not a member. So, in my view, if you are already at your max directly at TD, those $ you have at TD via WS are not covered