Wealthsimple Work

A Group RRSP (sometimes referred to as a Group Retirement Savings Plan, GRRSP or GRSP) is similar to an individual RRSP, except that it’s set up by the employer as a workplace benefit – part of the overall compensation package for employees. You can choose to offer a base contribution (i.e. a dollar amount regardless of whether employees contribute anything) and/or a matching contribution (e.g. if an employee contributes 3% of their salary, you’ll also kick in 3%). Or, you can offer it without either of these contributions but instead as an easier way to automate your own contributions, steadily grow your future savings and enjoy immediate tax benefits.

If you’re familiar with workplace retirement savings in the U.S, a Group RRSP is the equivalent of a 401(k) in Canada.

We don’t require any minimum contributions or minimum number of employees to get started with Wealthsimple Work. Employers of all sizes offer our group RRSPs, whether they have 2 employees or 2,000.

For employees: Just like Wealthsimple Invest, we offer low fees for our Group RRSP (GRRSP or GRSP) offering. Employees pay fees of 0.5% for portfolios under $100,000 and 0.4% for portfolios over $100,000, plus a Management Expense Ratio (MER) from the underlying ETFs we invest in, which averages out to about 0.15%

In comparison, traditional GRRSPs with actively managed mutual funds can cost your employees anywhere from 1.5–2.5% of their contributions. That’s a lot of lost earnings — especially considering compound interest over 20, 30, 40 years.

For employers: On the employer side, we charge a low monthly software fee — no hidden, transfer or withdrawal fees. For more details, book a chat with our team.

Once you’ve decided on Wealthsimple as your partner for group retirement services, we send over an agreement via Docusign. Once that’s signed, your admin team will go through a comprehensive training session. Our Wealthsimple Work team will walk you through the platform, teaching you how to set up, access, and update employee information. As soon as you’re comfortable using the platform, we’ll invite the rest of your organization to join your Wealthsimple group Group RRSP (GRSP).

If any of your employees are already Wealthsimple clients, they can connect their new GRRSP plan to an existing account. For those new to Wealthsimple, they’ll need to answer a brief questionnaire (less than 10 minutes) to best assess which portfolio matches their needs.

Based on your initial questionnaire, you would have been placed into a portfolio type based on your risk tolerance level (Growth, Balanced or Conservative) and preferred theme (Standard, Social Responsible Investing or Halal). You can view the performance history of these portfolios below.

• Standard Portfolio Performance: Growth, Balanced, Conservative
• SRI Portfolio Performances: Growth, Balanced, Conservative
• Halal Portfolio Performance: Growth, Balanced, Conservative

Very! We do this all the time.

To transfer an existing Group RRSP, just send a termination notice to your current provider (cc’ing w4w@wealthsimple.com). Our team will take it from there, coordinating with your provider to transfer your plans over to Wealthsimple. This process can take anywhere from 4 to 6 weeks depending on the provider.

Wealthsimple offers a variety of resources to help educate your team on the fundamentals of investing — and we’re working hard to add more resources regularly. Just let us know if there’s something you’d like to see!

• 1:1 appointments with our financial experts
• Retirement Calculator
• Investing Masterclass
• Wealthsimple Magazine
• Personal Finance 101 Blog
• Lunch & Learns on the 5 Rules of Investing

For a great place to start, check out this article that answers what is a GRSP and how it works.

Learn More