With AUA exceeding $100 billion, the Toronto-based firm aims to support investments through lower fees, diversification and artificial intelligence.
Wealth is simple introduced a suite of products and services designed to provide its clients with more advanced investment options and tools at a lower cost.
A growing share of Canadians are “obsessed with investing like never before.”
These range from zero-commission options contracts and lower-cost cryptocurrency trading, to the ability to buy and sell gold, access to direct indexing, mutual fund exchanges, an alternative investment portfolio, loans to help maximize RRSP contributions, and stock research tools using artificial intelligence (AI).
The announcements come as Wealthsimple announces a major milestone: the Toronto-based fintech company has surpassed C$100 billion in total assets under management (AUA). Wealthsimple reached milestone three years ahead of schedule initial target for December 2028after rising 37 percent since March 31.
Wealthsimple shared news from Evergreen Brick Works in Toronto today during its second product launch at its new Wealthsimple gifts series, which he called “Only for Nerds.” At its inaugural launch earlier this year, Wealthsimple introduced many banking products this included a credit card, instant line of credit, and an enhanced checking account.
With many of these offerings available either now or very soon, Wealthsimple has shifted its focus to sharing the company's vision for the future of investing. “We want to go back to our roots and focus on our investment products,” Wealthsimple chief commercial officer Paul Teshima told BetaKit in an interview ahead of today's event.
Wealthsimple started in 2014 as a robo-advisor. Many at that time saw Wealthsimple as a product only for beginners, early investors and young people. The company has since expanded its investment capabilities into other areas of wealth management, such as banking. As part of its commitment to creating a “full-service financial solution” for Canadians, the company has also attracted wealthier clients and more sophisticated traders. Now an 11 year old company profitableserves more than three million customers and is appreciated worth more than $5 billion.
Wealthsimple co-founder and CEO Michael Katchen noted on stage that it took the company 10 years to reach an AUA of $50 billion and just one year to double that amount. IN blog post Last fall, Katchen laid out Wealthsimple's next goal: $1 trillion in AUA over the next 10 years.
CONNECTED: Wealthsimple Unveils First Credit Card and Enhanced Checking Account at First Product Launch
As VP of Product Swapnil Parikh told BetaKit in an interview after the presentation, “We’re aiming for something much bigger.”
Wealthsimple continues to view investing as a core part of its vision, and its new and upcoming releases reflect recent feedback from its retail investor clients. “We've learned that clients are actually more confident than ever in their ability to manage their investments, and they're becoming more savvy,” Teshima said.
A recent survey of 1,000 Wealthsimple clients aged 25 to 45, each with more than $50,000 in investable assets, found that 92 percent feel confident managing their own portfolios, two-thirds believe DIY investing is the best approach for them, and 69 percent have an above-average risk tolerance. “They embrace what we call their inner financier,” Teshima said.
As Katchen noted on stage, many Wealthsimple clients still want a simple, hassle-free experience, while some prefer to “work on every detail of their portfolio” themselves, seeking to utilize strategies that were once available to institutional and wealthy investors. “This is a whole new generation of, and I say this in the most charming way possible, investing nerds,” he said.
However, 79 percent of Wealthsimple clients surveyed believe Canadian financial institutions' slow innovation is holding them back from achieving their goals.
“We've incorporated nerds and the benefits they bring into everything they do, from the advice we give to the types of investments and tools we offer,” Katchen said.
As Wealthsimple seeks to once again enhance its investment capabilities to meet this demand, Teshima argues that there are three pillars of a successful investment strategy: low fees, diversification and leverage. Today's announcements fall into these three categories.
In an effort to reduce commissions, Wealthsimple says it is now the first and only brokerage in Canada to offer options contracts with truly zero commissions after eliminating per-contract commissions. The company is also launching a new reduced fee structure for cryptocurrency trading based on volume. These features, which are in addition to the zero-fee trading of stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that Wealthsimple already provides, are now available.
“We believe we need to continue to innovate in the investment world, and AI will be part of that.”
During the product launch, the room filled with cheers as the conversation turned to the high mutual fund fees that Canadians still pay compared to other countries. Wealthsimple co-founder and chief product officer Brett Huneycutt called it a “national problem” on stage. Later this year, Wealthsimple will allow clients to move mutual fund accounts to its platform, cover the transfer fees and charge lower fees.
In early 2026, the company aims to launch Norbert's Gambit, a frequently requested currency conversion technique that will help clients avoid high currency spreads. The company invited Norbert Schlenker, the Canadian investor behind the investment strategy, on stage to explain it to the audience.
Wealthsimple is confident that these steps will help it both attract new clients and convince existing clients to attract more clients to its platform. “We've learned that over time, as people start using our products more, they tend to consolidate more of their wealth and do more business with us,” Teshima said.
In terms of diversification, the company has launched Canadian dollar gold trading with free storage and home delivery, as well as a direct indexing portfolio that typically involves advisor support. Parikh described it as “complex from the inside out.” [but] Simple for the user.” The company says it can help clients outperform market indices by 0.5 percent per year through strategic tax loss harvesting.
By the end of 2025, Wealthsimple also intends to introduce more advanced options strategies and launch the Summit Portfolio, an expanded offering for long-term investors with access to private investing and private lending.
“Clients want to do more complex things on their own, and so we want to give them the tools to be able to do that,” Parikh said, citing as an example the changes to options fees that Wealthsimple announced first and drew the biggest applause of the day from attendees.
However, Parikh noted that Wealthsimple also has clients investing through buy-and-hold portfolios seeking greater complexity without any additional work on their part. This was the impetus for the launch of Summit and direct indexing.
On the leverage side, Wealthsimple intends to launch low-interest Retirement Accelerator loans in early 2026 to help investors maximize their registered retirement savings plan (RRSP) contributions.
Partly thanks to his acquisition Earlier this year, Montreal-based Fey Wealthsimple also plans to roll out an AI-powered investment research and trading dashboard that will help clients find suitable stocks, analyze performance and summarize market drivers.
CONNECTED: Wealthsimple acquires Fey to expand its investment research capabilities
“We believe we need to continue to innovate in the investment world, and artificial intelligence will be part of that,” Teshima said, noting that Wealthsimple clients are asking for deeper research capabilities.
Teshima sees an opportunity for the company to use natural language processing and generative artificial intelligence to conduct such research, provided that any such tools undergo rigorous testing for accuracy and have the necessary security measures in place. He noted that Wealthsimple is already using AI to support clients following a similar process and is implementing both its own AI models and external options while maintaining control over client data.
While many of these products appear to be aimed at more sophisticated investors looking to gain a competitive advantage through more complex and risky trading strategies and financial instruments, Teshima said the company believes “more than just a subset of Canadians” will be interested in them.
“We're hoping that we'll get a mix of people who will start using these tools today, but also people who just want to learn so that maybe they'll want to implement some of these strategies in the future,” Teshima said.
Disclosure: Hannah Zaidi, Wealthsimple's Vice President of Payments Strategy and Chief Compliance Officer, serves as BetaKit Board of Directors.
Image courtesy of Wealthsimple.
