Log In
Register
Home
Topic RSS
Facebook
Twitter
Email this10:57 am
December 12, 2009
Offline
Wealthsimple recently shared that its assets under administration have now surpassed $100 billion, which is up 100% over 2024's $50 billion in AUA and 2025 isn't even finished. While it doesn't break down the AUA by asset type, $40-60 billion are assumed to be in its Wealthsimple Cash and Save deposit products (held in Wealthsimple Investments, Inc.-managed pooled trust deposit accounts at several CDIC member institutions), with the balance in Stocks & ETFs, Invest, and Crypto accounts.
That puts them on part with EQB Inc. in terms of AUA and they have now lapped, several times, Home Trust / Home Bank.
As part of that announcement, it announced a new equity fundraising round of $750 million, bringing in new private equity (Dragoneer Investment Group) and sovereign wealth funds (Singapore GIC and CPP Investment Board) as new investors. Most, if not all, existing investors, notably controlling shareholder Power Corporation of Canada, participated in the funding round, to at least maintain their equity ownership positions. 
The firm is now valued, fairly conservatively, at $10 billion.
300,000 Canadians now have their premium industry-leading Wealthsimple credit card. While they don't break out the number of Canadians with a Wealthsimple Cash account, it's likely between 750,000-3 million. 3 million use Wealthsimple.
On digital everyday banking, this puts them either narrowly ahead of EQ Bank's Personal Account in terms of total unique customers, significantly ahead of PC Financial's PC Money Account, to possibly ahead of Simplii Financial's 1.5-1.9 million (they never update their total customers anymore, and I believe it's bled customers a bit each year). They may equal or surpass Tangerine Chequing in the next couple of years.
This is why Motive Financial and Motus Bank threw in the towel, and LBC Digital is likely to do the same soon.
Cheers,
Doug
11:15 am
October 27, 2013
Offline
One has to be careful on what one is comparing when they say AUM/AUA.
Do you really know how much the Fairstone Bank group of companies (Fairstone Financial, Home Trust, Home Bank, et al) really have in AUA/AUM? I don't since it is privately held and not everything will be publicly available.
The Equitable Group of companies supposedly currently have about $137B of AUM so size is comparable, but somewhat different in terms of where the assets are deployed.
1:28 pm
December 12, 2009
Offline
AltaRed said
One has to be careful on what one is comparing when they say AUM/AUA.
Yes. AUM can generate more revenue than AUA
Do you really know how much the Fairstone Bank group of companies (Fairstone Financial, Home Trust, Home Bank, et al) really have in AUA/AUM? I don't since it is privately held and not everything will be publicly available.
That's true of Fairstone Financial, Inc., the subsidiary, but thankfully that is mostly just consumer loans and private label credit cards, which wouldn't count as AUA for our purposes. Pre-merger with Duo Bank of Canada, which had ~$1 billion in deposits. Looking at the deposits of Home Bank, we see they have about $6.5 billion, and Fairstone Bank of Canada, has about $22 billion, which seems a bit high (this is as of August 31, 2025, OSFI returns). This suggests they've already effected a block transfer of deposits from Home Trust Company, as I can't load HTC's OSFI financial return. Even if it doesn't, one of the reasons for the go-private transaction was to turn around the Home businesses. Their growth had trailed the CPI and GDP growth rates, and there's no reason to suggest they've been going gangbusters since. I would suggest they've, at best, treaded water. If we assume that and add in another $35-38 billion in deposits, we still don't even get to $70 billion.
Cheers,
Doug
Please write your comments in the forum.