hey guys it's adrian here the canadian in a t-shirt and today i'll be breaking down how to
transfer money and investments from your banks and online brokers into questrade i'll provide
a step-by-step walkthrough on how to perform cash or in-kind transfers into questrade this
is especially useful for your registered accounts like your TFSA or your RRSP if you follow these
steps you can move your entire portfolio into questrade for free it won't cost you a thing and
best of all it will not affect your contribution room for your TFSA or RRSP accounts i'll show you
the wrong way to do this and then the right way to do this but first of all why should we switch to
questrade? questrade is my favorite online broker in canada because of its low fees i've talked
about why i love questrade and how their fees work in my previous Questrade tutorials including how
to open a Questrade account how to actually buy stocks and how to buy u.s stocks using norbert's
gambit so click the pop-up at the top right to check out my Questrade playlist there are lots
of great online brokers out there in fact each of the big canadian banks offer their own online
broker but these are quite expensive with those brokers every time you buy or sell a stock or etf
you'll have to pay ten dollars in commission fees that can really add up. on top of that the
big banks usually charge a monthly or quarterly maintenance fee just to keep your account open for
a beginner who isn't starting with a lot of money this could really hurt. with questrade you pay half
as much in commissions compared to the big banks when you buy or sell stocks with questrade they'll
only charge you five dollars in commission fees and even better they charge no fee when you buy
etfs this makes a huge difference especially if you're starting out with smaller sums of money on
top of that questrade does not charge a monthly or quarterly maintenance fee they used to charge
an inactivity fee if you had less than a thousand dollars in your account and you didn't do anything
for three months but ever since october they've gotten rid of this so you'll never have to pay
anything just to keep your Questrade account open you'll only pay commission fees when you actually
buy stocks Questrade's commission is priced at one cent per share with a minimum of $4.95 and a maximum
of $9.95 when you buy stocks buying etfs is free to simplify if you buy 500 shares or less you'll only
pay five dollars if you buy a thousand shares or more you'll pay ten dollars for most people you'll
only ever be charged five dollars commission on stocks unless you're investing tens of thousands
of dollars at once so if you're investing with one of the big banks and their commission fees
are killing you you might want to consider moving your portfolio into questrade that's what i did a
few years ago and i'll show you exactly how to do it another huge benefit over other brokers like
wealthsimple trade is that questrade allows you to hold both canadian dollars and us dollars with
wealthsimple you can only hold canadian dollars so every time you buy or sell a us stock it will
automatically be converted back into canadian dollars and they'll charge you a 1.5% currency
conversion fee every single time that's huge! with questrade your u.s investments remain in u.s
dollars and your canadian investments remain in canadian dollars this saves you a ton of money in
the long run and if you need to convert canadian dollars into us dollars you can use norbert's
gambit with questrade to make this conversion for free you won't be charged a conversion fee like
you would at a bank or another broker like will simple click the pop-up at the top right to check
out my step-by-step guide on norbert's gambit it can save you hundreds or even thousands of dollars
in conversion fees Wealthsimple trade is a great platform but only use it for canadian investments
if you currently have u.s stocks or etfs in your wealth simple account i would suggest transferring
them over into questrade and i'll show you exactly how to do that. to transfer your portfolio into
questrade there's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it i get this question all the
time and unfortunately a lot of canadians are doing the wrong way let's say you own stocks in
your tfsa account with td direct investing and you've had enough of their high commission fees
so you decide to switch over to questrade so you decide to cash out and sell your stocks
then you decide to withdraw the cash out of your TFSA account and into your bank account and finally
you move that cash into your questrade TFSA and start buying stocks once again don't do this! this
is a mistake first of all you could be cashing out and selling your stock at a loss especially right
now while the market is still down if you bought a thousand dollars worth of stocks and then the
market crash happened and now they're only worth seven hundred dollars if you cash out and sell
you've just lost three hundred dollars that money is gone if this is a stock that you wanted to hold
on to you didn't have to sell it you could have just transferred the stock itself into questrade
the same stock you held in your TD account will now be held in your Questrade account but it's
the same stock you haven't sold it and so you haven't lost any money you've just moved the stock
and when the market recovers then you can sell the stock at a profit instead of a loss or you
can keep holding it this is called an in-kind transfer you're not transferring the cash value
of an investment you're transferring the stock itself i'll get into this later in the video but
i usually recommend in-kind transfers another mistake of cashing out and selling the stock
is that you have to pay commission fees when you sell it and if you're with a big bank that
will cost you $10 for each stock that you want to sell and once that cash is moved over to questrade
you'll have to pay commissions once again to buy that stock back but the biggest mistake with this
approach is withdrawing the cash out of your tfsa even though you're not spending this money and
you want to immediately put this money back into your tfsa through questrade it still counts as a
withdrawal and that affects your contribution room if your TFSA was maxed out you don't regain this
contribution room until january 1st of next year and so if you withdraw money out of your bank's
TFSA to try to move it into your questrade's TFSA you might have to wait for months
sitting with a pile of cash until you can actually put it into your questrate tfsa don't make this
mistake and this is even worse when dealing with an rrsp if you withdraw money from an rrsp you
don't get to put it back that contribution room is gone forever and worse you will be taxed on
that rrsp withdrawal make sure you check out my canadian tax guide playlist to learn all about how
the TFSA and rrsp accounts work so click the pop-up at the top right i hope i scared you
enough into avoiding this approach don't cash out withdraw and move that money into questrade
there's a much safer and easier approach to move your money from another bank into questrade and
the best part is it won't cost you a thing you won't have to sell your stocks at a loss and
it won't affect your contribution room you do this by submitting a transfer request through questrade
i'll show you a step-by-step walkthrough later in the video but for now let's break down how
it works to begin you have to have a Questrade account set up i have a whole video tutorial on
how to open a Questrade investing account so click the pop-up at the top right to check out that
video and then come back to this one to open your account make sure you click my referral link in
the box below and you'll get $50 in commission free trade rebates for the first 30 days when you sign
up that basically means that your first 10 stock trades will be commission free that saves you $50
plus i'll get a small referral bonus as well so once your account is set up you can request a
transfer through questrade that basically means that questrade will coordinate with your bank to
move whatever cash or investments you have in that account into your Questrade account you have a few
options to choose from you can request a cash transfer or an in-kind transfer a cash transfer
means that your bank will liquidate all of your investments basically they'll sell your stocks as
cash and then transfer that cash amount into your Questrade account but if you want to keep the same
investments and just move them into questrade then you should do an in-kind transfer instead
with an in-kind transfer all of your stocks bonds etfs REITs and cash will remain exactly as they
are they'll just be moved into your Questrade account so if you own 50 shares of enbridge
and you have two thousand dollars of cash sitting in your bank's investing account when you request
an in-kind transfer now you'll have the exact same fifty shares of enbridge and the same two thousand
dollars in cash now sitting in your Questrade account you didn't sell anything so you don't
have to pay any commission fees and you don't have to worry about capital gains or locking in a loss
when you request a cash transfer it's treated the same as if you manually sold the stocks
so if your stocks are currently down you've locked in that loss as soon as you make the cash transfer
that money is gone and you don't get it back let's say you bought 50 shares for $10 each that's a $500
investment but now the market crashed and your 50 shares are only worth $6 each if you request a cash
transfer your bank will liquidate those 50 shares into $300 and move that money you started with a
$500 investment and now you're left with only $300 in cash in your Questrade account instead if you
performed an in-kind transfer it doesn't matter if those stocks are currently down those exact same
50 shares are moved over into questrade and hopefully in a matter of months or a year those
stocks will recover and if you absolutely need the cash once those stocks are in your Questrade
account then you can sell them manually in-kind transfer is best if your stocks are currently at
a loss but it's also great if you're at a profit to avoid paying unnecessary capital gains tax
for non-registered accounts so not a tfsa or an rrsp if you request a cash transfer it's treated
the same as if you manually sold your stocks and in a non-registered account whenever you sell a
stock and earn a profit or a capital gain you will be taxed on those capital gains so if you don't
want to sell them and you want to hold on to those stocks for longer then do an in-kind transfer
you're not cashing out and you're not selling those stocks so you haven't made any capital gains
and so you won't be taxed. an in-kind transfer is usually the best approach since it gives you more
flexibility and it doesn't force your hand but if you don't intend to hold on to those investments
and you want to cash out then a cash transfer makes sense also an in-kind transfer might not
be possible if those assets aren't available in questrade for example i held mutual funds in my
tangerine account and you can't buy tangerine mutual funds on questrade so i had to sell those
mutual funds and make a cash transfer Questrade offers even more flexibility because you don't
have to transfer your entire account over you can request a partial transfer if you want to empty
your account and move everything over to questrade then you could do an all in cash or an all-in-kind
transfer when you request a partial transfer you'll just have to specify exactly how much cash
you want to move which stocks or etfs you want to move and how many shares of each i'll walk you
through this whole thing later in the video one of the main benefits of requesting a transfer is
that it won't cost you anything when you transfer money or investments out of your bank or broker
that financial institution will almost always charge you a transfer fee and this fee is often
more expensive when transferring a registered account like a TFSA or RRSP it depends on the
institution but most of them will charge a transfer fee between $40 dollars and a
hundred and twenty dollars the good news is that questrade will reimburse you this transfer fee
up to a hundred and fifty dollars and it doesn't matter how much or how little you transfer over
there's no minimum balance required you just have to show Questrade proof that your bank charged you
a transfer fee and questrade will reimburse you and i'll show you how to do that and you
can do this for each of your accounts across different institutions it's a great incentive
to attract new clients another huge benefit of this transfer approach is that it will not affect
your contribution room for your TFSA or your rrsp question will coordinate with your bank to
transfer those funds from their TFSA account into a questrate TFSA account that money never leaves the
TFSA umbrella so it's not considered a withdrawal or a contribution the only thing that changes is
your broker your TFSA or RRSP contribution room does not change so you can request this transfer
anytime you want so you don't have to wait until january to regain your TFSA room like you would
if you manually withdrew that money an important thing if you're transferring from a registered
account you must transfer it to the same type of account so if you're transferring stocks or money
from your bank's tfsa account it must go into a TFSA account with questrade you can't move
it into an rrsp account once the transfer is complete and your stocks are in Questrade then
you could transfer between your tfsa and rrsp account but i'll cover that in a separate video
so those are all the rules and benefits of submitting a transfer request with questrade
now let's see how we actually do it okay so i just logged into questrade so at the top here
i head over to funding and i click on transfer account to questrade here we click start request
so now we have to choose which Questrade account we want to transfer to i have three options
here i'm going to choose my tfsa account so i click next and now where am i transferring from
here on this drop-down list you're going to see a long list of financial institutions
so things like banks brokers credit unions but i'm going to choose td direct investing
and now my account number remember i'm transferring into my tfsa so it has to be
coming out of my tfsa as well so i have to enter the account number of my tfsa account with td
direct investing and now i have a few options i can either transfer my entire account over
or i can do a partial transfer if i want to do the entire account i can do it all
in cash meaning i liquidate all my stocks and transfer the full cash amount of my tfsa account
or i can do all in kind meaning i maintain and preserve all the stocks cash etfs all
the investments i have in my td account will just be migrated over into my Questrade account and a
partial transfer allows me to pick and choose how much cash i want to move over and which
stocks i want to move over and how many shares to show you the steps let's start with all in cash
you have to provide a rough estimate of the total value of this account again the market value of
your investments fluctuates every minute of every day but you still have to give them a
rough idea so let's say i have about $5000 canadian dollars in my TD tfsa account and
this takes us to a confirmation page where we can confirm the details so i'm transferring money
into my Questrade TFSA account from my td direct investing TFSA account with this account number
i'm going to do all in cash roughly five thousand dollars and for the processing time questrade
estimates about 20 business days but that depends on your financial institution in my experience
transferring from banks like td or tangerine it only took me about two weeks but give yourself
a few weeks for it to process but i'm not going to submit this i'm going to go back and change it to
an all-in-kind transfer and go through the same steps enter the estimated value of the account
and then you get to the confirmation page what's different is if i do a partial transfer they add
an extra step with a partial transfer we have to specify exactly what we want to transfer over
so we click add asset and now we can choose to transfer cash stocks mutual funds options or other
note that etfs are included in stock let's start with cash and let's say i only want to transfer
two thousand dollars canadian worth of cash but what if i also have us cash so we click
add asset and we add cash again and now we add 500 us dollars worth of cash and now let's transfer a
stock so we click add asset select stock and now we can choose i can either cash out and sell my
stock or i can transfer it in kind let's choose in-kind so let's transfer my shares of enbridge
so for the ticker symbol we enter ENB and for description just write enbridge and now
we say how many shares we want to transfer over i only want to transfer let's say 10 shares and now
for currency enbridge is traded on the toronto stock exchange so the currency is canadian if i
want to transfer a u.s stock like coca-cola which you can see here it's the exact same steps i just
select us dollars and for transferring ETFs it's treated the exact same way as transferring a stock
if we click next it takes us to the exact same confirmation page and now click confirm and sign
the last step is to sign this document where it basically just confirms all the details
which account you're transferring it to which account you're transferring it from
are you doing it all in cash all in kind or a partial transfer and if you're doing a partial
transfer it will list out exactly which stocks and assets you want to transfer over
as soon as you sign it and submit it your work is done now Questrade will coordinate with the
bank to process the transfer it will take a few weeks to process but you can always check your
status by clicking on request history here you can see when your transfer is finally complete
at that point your cash and stocks will be inside your questrade account depending on
your financial institution you might notice that some money is missing and that's because they
charged you a transfer fee and remember questrade will reimburse you that transfer fee up to $150
dollars so what you have to do is wait until the end of the month to receive a monthly statement
from your bank and that monthly statement will list that transfer fee that's the proof that Questrade
needs as an example this is my monthly statement from tangerine bank for june 2019.
looking at my rrsp account with tangerine at that month i sold 554 dollars worth of mutual funds and
then performed a cash transfer into my questrate rrsp account however tangerine charged me a $45
transfer fee as you can see right here so i have to upload this statement to questrade
to get that money back so on questrade go to account management and then upload documents
first you specify which account you're working out of and now for document type select rebate
and now we upload that monthly statement which shows that transfer fee that was charged to us
give a brief description of what the statement is and then click upload to get this rebate
from questrade make sure you upload this statement within 60 days of submitting your transfer request
and that's all you have to do now let's go to my account activity and go back in time to june of
2019 to see exactly what happened okay so i'm back in the summer of 2019 i only want to see
transactions for my rrsp account and i only want to see transfers and fees and rebates so in june
i transferred 554 dollars from my tangerine rrsp account into my questrate rrsp account and then a
month later i received the monthly statement where i saw that tangerine charged me a $45 transfer fee
so i uploaded that statement and a week later questrade reimbursed me that $45 transfer fee so
there you have it that's how you transfer money or investments into questrade from another bank or
broker and if you follow these steps it won't cost you a thing it won't affect your contribution room
for registered accounts and you can enjoy low cost investing with questrade and again if you want to
get started with questrade click my referral link in the box below and you'll get $50 in commission
free trade rebates for the first 30 days when you sign up plus i'll get a small referral bonus
as well thanks for watching guys and be sure to like comment and subscribe if you found this video
helpful every thumbs up and comment really does help me build this channel on youtube and hit that
bell icon to be notified of my new videos every week and if you'd like to follow me on instagram
or facebook @CanadianTShirt click the links in the box below or click the links on my homepage
thanks everyone and i'll see you guys on the next episode of the canadian in a t-shirt bye guys