Toronto-based Wealthsimple has announced a slew of new offerings, including its first credit card, an instant line of credit coming soon, and an expanded chequing account. The FinTech company also teased cheque and cash deliveries to customers’ doors.
Wealthsimple says these moves reflect its plan to build “a full-service financial solution” that moves beyond just investing to provide a broader range of money-management products and services, without excessive fees or the branch visits required by its incumbent competitors.
“It’s really our take on banking.”
Sam Newman-Bremang, Wealthsimple
“The whole company is excited that we really get to confidently say it out loud that we now have all the services you need to not just have your investing relationship with us, but also have your banking relationship with us,” Wealthsimple senior director of product Sam Newman-Bremang said in an interview with BetaKit ahead of the event.
Wealthsimple shared the product news today from Evergreen Brick Works in Toronto during the first event in its new Wealthsimple Presents series, which it called “The End of Banking?”
“We say ‘The end of banking,’ but it’s really our take on banking,” Newman-Bremang said.
The kickoff event, for which over 110,000 people registered to view virtually and hundreds attended in person, resembled a more focused version of Shopify Editions. Newman-Bremang said the company plans to host Wealthsimple Presents twice a year going forward to showcase some of its biggest new features and releases, with a second edition planned for this fall that will include some investment product news.
He said Wealthsimple Presents comes in response to increased demand from clients interested in learning more about what the company is building and how. “We see it as a great opportunity to connect with our product leaders, execs and advisor teams,” he added.
Since getting its start back in 2014 as a robo-adviser, Wealthsimple has broadened its investment capabilities and moved into other areas of money management. Wealthsimple now offers a suite of products across investing, cryptocurrency, tax filing, spending, and saving.
The expansion bet has been paying off: the nearly 11-year-old company is profitable, caters to more than three million clients, holds $70 billion CAD in assets under administration, and was most recently valued at $5 billion.
(Image courtesy Wealthsimple)
At the event, Wealthsimple co-founder and CEO Mike Katchen claimed that the company is the biggest Canadian financial institution to emerge in the last 25 years.
“The way I see it, the banks are a tax on all of us,” Katchen said on stage. “We as Canadians need to demand more.”
“Our goal is not to build another bank,” he continued. “Canada doesn’t need another bank.”
According to Wealthsimple, its new credit card—which Newman-Bremang said has been the company’s most requested product to date—will offer two-percent cash back on all spending while foregoing caps, additional foreign exchange (FX) fees on top of the exchange rate, annual fees, and tap limits.
“The way I see it, the banks are a tax on all of us. We as Canadians need to demand more.”
Mike Katchen
Wealthsimple CEO
Wealthsimple claims its chequing account (formerly Wealthsimple Cash) generates the highest interest rate for a chequing account in Canada at up to 2.75 percent, comes with no monthly account fees, FX fees, or ATM fees, allows direct deposit users to access their pay up to a day early, and provides up to $1 million in CDIC coverage. Today, one quarter of Wealthsimple customers now have a chequing account with the company.
Both products are available now. They will be joined by an instant line of credit that Wealthsimple plans to make available by the end of 2025 with rates as low as 4.45 percent. It will let clients leverage eligible Wealthsimple account balances as collateral.
The company also plans to launch two other financial services later this year: cheque and cash deliveries in both Canadian and US dollars.
Audience members were particularly excited about Wealthsimple’s credit card terms, the company’s upcoming instant line of credit, and its plans to deliver bank drafts, cheques, and cash. Multiple attendees who spoke to BetaKit after the presentation said today’s announcements would make them a bit nervous if they worked at big banks.
Newman-Bremang said Wealthsimple’s ultimate goal is “to be the one financial relationship” that Canadians need. To get there, the company decided to integrate all of its products into a single platform that it launched in 2022 and recently redesigned.
RELATED: Wealthsimple acquihires Plenty, a San Francisco-based wealth management platform for couples
He said this has allowed Wealthsimple to take a holistic view of its clients and unit economics.
Today, Newman-Bremang claims the FinTech firm can offer lower fees and more attractive terms than many competitors in the banking space for two reasons: its decreased overhead due to its lack of physical branches, and because it is betting that chequing account and credit card holders are more likely to invest through its platform and leverage its other products.
Newman-Bremang said Wealthsimple’s longer-term product roadmap involves continuing to experiment around mortgages, where it has been partnering with Toronto-based digital mortgage provider Pine, and exploring how to do more around family wealth management following its recent acquisition of San Francisco-based Plenty.
Speaking on stage at the event, Wealthsimple co-founder and chief product officer Brett Huneycutt said that the next Wealthsimple Presents will focus on investing, hinting that the company plans to replace its robo-advisor with more sophisticated and personalized trading capabilities, offer access to new private markets, and share some crypto-related product news.
“You could probably call the next one ‘The end of investing,’ at least as it’s done today,” he said.
Feature image courtesy Wealthsimple. Photo by Jack Peros.