# You Folks Keep Multiple Brokerage Accounts?



## peterk (May 16, 2010)

I'll be maxing out my registered accounts by the end of the year and will need to open a new non-registered account to continue investing. After reading a few threads here I am not so sure continuing at Questrade with a margin account is the best idea, especially once I start getting into serious money within a few years...

My plan is to open a TDW cash account in the next few months. I think I'll go with TDW since it seems to get overall good reviews and high praise. I am also very interested in purchasing a few individual stocks on foreign markets, and it sounds like TDW has the best system for that. This would be my main non-registered investment account.

Additionally I'd like to begin dabbling in Options trading, maybe next year, and from the sounds of it a margin account at IB is the best way to go. The commissions there are the lowest, which is particularly a big deal when starting out and selling/buying only 1 or 2 contracts at a time.

I guess the question is, is it going to be too much hassle to manage multiple brokers? Is there some unforeseen complication I'm not considering? Is this a normal thing most people do?

I am not unhappy with Questrade, and don't see the need to remove my RRSP/TFSA from there at this time (isn't it a hassle to move registered account between brokers anyways?).

Summary:

Questrade - All RRSP/TFSA investments, only.
TDW - Cash Account (maybe margin as well?), primary unregistered broker.
IB - Margin account to keep unregistered investments that I'll be exposing to options.


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

I use IB and Questrade exactly how you have them listed in your summary.

I thought someday I would consolidate everything to TDW if they modernized after seeing everything IB and Questrade are doing. As far as I can see they are happy to chip away with hidden fees and they don't need to compete with funky brokerages like Questrade or IB because Canadians seem to be blindly loyal to their big banks.

I own several Canadian big bank stocks though.


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## gardner (Feb 13, 2014)

I used to have eTrade Canada before they became Scotia iTrade, and I have had TDDI since it was Canada Trust. I am very glad that I consolidated everything into TDDI. This leaves me with eTrade US for my employee stock trading, which is tied to them, and TDDI with 99.9% of everything. No complaints about this arrangement.

I do not have, need or want a margin or derivative account, so I would not know how to choose if TD is right.

I have considered whether the TD global trading arrangement would be interesting, but, on balance it is complex, full of fees and strange cross-jurisdictional risks. I believe ADRs will serve my needs for now.


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## AltaRed (Jun 8, 2009)

Generally speaking, I believe less multiple brokerages is better than more, if nothing else for the due consideration of your spouse and/or executor when one gets hit unexpectedly by that bus. Don't punish your loved ones with complicated financial affairs and if you insist, then name a professional executor at least as a co-executor, or alternative executor (who will of course charge the estate for those services).

Having said that, there are merits, with enough funds to meet threshold levels, in having 2 discount brokerages if for nothing else than to be able to use the best features of each, such as research, charting, trading platform, performance measurement, etc, etc. One brokerage might be better for registered accounts and one might be better for cash accounts, or one allows purchase of GICs online while another does not, or one allows USD RRSPs and TFSAs and one does not, or one has a better Level 2 trading platform, etc.

At the moment, I have iClub status at Scotia iTrade, 5 star status at BMO IL and Royal Circle status at RBC DI. Having those thresholds brings some freebies such as trading platforms and/or exclusive access to select personnel and research, preferential allocations to IPOs, etc. I do plan to consolidate to 2 brokerages in the near future.


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## CPA Candidate (Dec 15, 2013)

peterk said:


> I'll be maxing out my registered accounts by the end of the year and will need to open a new non-registered account to continue investing. After reading a few threads here I am not so sure continuing at Questrade with a margin account is the best idea, especially once I start getting into serious money within a few years...


Do let the fear mongers here get to you.

If you want to get a sense of the nearly pathological alarmism among some posters here, please check out the Ebola thread.


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## Woz (Sep 5, 2013)

I use two brokerages. One for registered accounts and one for unregistered.

I personally wouldn't want to have my unregistered accounts split across two brokerages, but I don't think there's any real downside other than a bit more complexity. 

For tax purposes it's all considered one account so keep track of your cost bases yourself. Also, your T1135 might take a little longer with two accounts if you have >$100k of foreign assets.


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## Sherlock (Apr 18, 2010)

No I stick with my bank, it's $7 per trade, and it's easier to transfer between the bank's discount brokerage and my checking account, it's all on one website. Questrade is $5 per trade but I do relatively few trades so the difference is negligible.


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## My Own Advisor (Sep 24, 2012)

AltaRed said:


> At the moment, I have iClub status at Scotia iTrade, 5 star status at BMO IL and Royal Circle status at RBC DI. Having those thresholds brings some freebies such as trading platforms and/or exclusive access to select personnel and research, preferential allocations to IPOs, etc. I do plan to consolidate to 2 brokerages in the near future.


Nicely done with the status AR 

Any concerns with just going to one brokerage?


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## AltaRed (Jun 8, 2009)

My Own Advisor said:


> Any concerns with just going to one brokerage?


I would not have concerns with just one brokerage, especially one of the big 5, even if well over CIPF coverage. That said, I have some personal reasons for continuing to have 2 brokerages (2 taxable cash accounts) and hence why I would not consolidate to just one.


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## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

parties who wish to gambit (arbitrage) CAD/USD at regular intervals ought to have a backup account at BMO or royal bank, imho.

these are the only 2 brokers whose online platforms offer instant, easy, $9.95 commission each side, no-phone-call gambit trading. Anyone who has survived those iffy commission/delay/journal phone conversations at other brokers will appreciate the speed & the ease of gambit trading at the 2 blues.

how do BMO & roybank do it? both broker systems are based on ADP, not the ISM mainframe leased by most other canadian brokers. ADP works by CUSIP number, so it's indifferent to whether a stock is being bought or sold in canadian or US market. 

a backup broker is also good for other reasons. For when the principal broker website goes down. For variety in research. 

alas BMO is still in the dark ages for options & one hears that option trading at roybank is even darker .each:


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## avrex (Nov 14, 2010)

I have the following:

*TDDI* - All RRSP/TFSA investments. Plus it is my main banking account.
*Scotia iTrade *- non-registered investments.
*Interactive Brokers* - non registered. Used for options trading. Fees are ultra cheap. 
Also use this account for the cheap USD/CAD currency conversions, which I use to transfer between this and my other accounts above.


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## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

Unregistered Cash account at my primary bank (TD)
RRSP at BMO, as the group RRSP was there and I never bothered to move it. 
LIRA (from old pension ) at Scotiabank.

Gives me access to 3 slightly different research pools, and I couldn't merge the accounts if I wanted to.


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## My Own Advisor (Sep 24, 2012)

AltaRed said:


> I would not have concerns with just one brokerage, especially one of the big 5, even if well over CIPF coverage. That said, I have some personal reasons for continuing to have 2 brokerages (2 taxable cash accounts) and hence why I would not consolidate to just one.


Fair enough. Just curious. I just figure you might have had concerns with one of the big 5 brokerages.


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## Ag Driver (Dec 13, 2012)

I consolidated purely due to fees. QTrade started to charge an annual fee on TFSA's, so I dumped everything into my TDDI account.


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## Beaver101 (Nov 14, 2011)

Ag Driver said:


> I consolidated purely due to fees. *QTrade started to charge an annual fee on TFSA's*, so I dumped everything into my TDDI account.


 ... interesting ... wonder if the other non-bank discount brokerages will follow the lead and then the banks' d.b. ... but then you, the customer walked. :encouragement:


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## digitalatlas (Jun 6, 2015)

i consolidated a couple accounts with registered investments (manulife and sunlife) that i had with 2 different employers into TD (e-series only, not full blown TDW) and Questrade.

my first investment account was an e-series account. i later opened a questrade account because of the low commissions and i wanted to learn to trade, so these were my most long-standing accounts. i've kept both but figure i may further consolidate into just one TDW account eventually, but even $10 trades cost more than questrade, and i haven't had any major issues with either service.

the point is, transferring registered accounts was easier than i thought. send in a form, pay a fee (about $50), and it's done. better than receiving statements and marketing nonsense for several accounts.


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## peterk (May 16, 2010)

Awesome, thanks for the advice guys. Sounds like I'm not off my rocker then. It'll still be several months before I need an unregistered account, so I have some time to think about it still.


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## Cal (Jun 17, 2009)

1 brokerage for simplicity....


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## Robillard (Apr 11, 2009)

I have a bunch of accounts with TD Direct Investing Canada: cash accounts, RRSP, Locked-in RRSP, and TFSA. And I have an account with TD Direct Investing International (Luxembourg). I don't have any complaints about TDDI Canada, except for a problem this year getting tax forms. 

I find TDDI International to be very expensive. Trading fees for Canada, the US and the UK markets are 14.95 euros, 24.95 euros for most european markets, and 49.95 euros for Australia and Hong Kong. Also, there is a quarterly account maintenance fee. I only opened the TDDI International account because I'm non-resident in Canada. Maybe I was paranoid, and I didn't want my foreign income flowing through the Canadian financial system, and potentially getting subjected to Canadian withholding taxes. In retrospect, perhaps this was a baseless worry. I probably could have opened international trading accounts with TDDI Canada. I'm not exactly sure what kind of advantages there are from having my international account under the Luxembourg financial regulator compared to the Canadian financial regulators. Regardless, with the OECD's common reporting standards coming into effect in 2017 and 2018, the Canadian government will be able to get full access to my account information.


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

I think diversification is always a good thing. I use two big bank brokerages.

One of the reasons is that I want both margin and non-margin accounts. I use my margin account at TDDI for a little more flexibility (and can use it like a LoC if I need).

At the other bank brokerage, I opened a cash-only, non-margin account. This is for a little more safety and less chance of funny brokerage games such as lending out my shares and commingling / rehypothecation games, as other brokerages certainly do (ever heard of MF Global?).

The likelihood of fraud or loss at a big bank brokerage is very low. The likelihood of loss at TWO big bank brokerages is ... nil. That's why I diversify


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