Wealthsimple will replicate traditional retail banking services such as credit cards, loans and even old-fashioned cheques, putting it in direct competition with other financial institutions beyond its core investing products.

In an interview, the Toronto-based fintech’s senior product director, Sam Newman-Bremang, said the new suite of products will help it become its clients’ primary financial relationship—and eventually even become Canada’s largest financial institution. 

“As a company, we’re stepping into this phase where we’re more confident that we can build the whole suite of services,” Newman-Bremang said.

Other fintechs, such as Calgary’s Neo Financial and fellow Toronto-based firm Koho Financial, also offer products that are similar to retail banking services. Koho has interest-bearing chequing account-like products and announced it would offer personal lines of credit in partnership with fellow fintech Propel in September. Neo also offers chequing account-like products, credit cards and mortgages.

In addition to competition from other fintechs, Wealthsimple has an uphill battle as it works to unseat the country’s big banks. Canada’s financial system is notoriously concentrated, with the six largest lenders holding 93 per cent of banking assets. Wealthsimple currently holds about $70 billion on behalf of clients—not far off the $74 billion managed by EQ Bank, Canada’s seventh-largest bank, but a far cry from RBC’s $1.4 trillion in assets under management. The fintech’s assets are up from the $50 billion CEO Michael Katchen said the firm held in September, which was nearly double what it held the previous year.

The privately held company, in which the wealthy Desmarais family’s financial conglomerate Power Corp. owns a controlling stake, was last valued at $5 billion in November 2024.

Wealthsimple’s new products take aim at a long-standing frustration with high fees among Canadian retail banking customers, offering free ATM withdrawals, no foreign exchange fees and other products with rates and fees that undercut competitors. A report last year from Alberta-based consultancy North Economics found Canadians could save $8.5 billion annually in fees with stronger competition in the financial sector.

In a 2024 report, the Canadian Bankers Association said Canada’s financial sector is “highly competitive” and that the concentration of banking assets “is not unusual amongst industrialized countries.” Banking in Canada is “accessible and affordable” and more than half of Canadians either don’t pay bank account service fees or have them waived, according to the report.

Newman-Bremang said Wealthsimple has no plans to become a bank, which he said isn’t necessary to offer its products. However, the lack of a banking licence does preclude Wealthsimple from participating in the core way that banks make money: lending deposits out to fund mortgages, business loans and other economic activities.

A group of undisclosed banks, rather than Wealthsimple, technically hold the deposits in the fintech’s existing chequing account product, reinvesting them to earn the interest rate of up to 2.75 per cent the fintech offers customers. This makes clients eligible for reimbursement through the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation in the event the banks that hold the funds fail.

Wealthsimple’s new products rely on partners less than other fintechs, however. The firm is issuing its new credit card itself, which it says is a first for a customer-facing non-bank in Canada. Wealthsimple is also underwriting its own personal loan product, although it’s working with banking partners to fund the loans.  

Newman-Bremang said the company has ways to earn revenue from its banking products, such as credit card fees and interest, but its main business model for them is an indirect one. The fintech is betting customers who already bank with it will also invest more in its wealth management products, he said.

“We can think about the banking experience as a way to accelerate the investing relationship,” he said. “We’re building them into the whole ecosystem.”