(Article updated January 4, 2011 to update margin rates and put in a current rate of interest.)
(Readers may also be interested in reading A Questrade Failure [January 4, 2011], and Watch out for Questrade – Check those statements [February 16, 2011].)
I reviewed Interactive Brokers previously; I use them for my non-registered investments. For my RRSP and TFSA, and for TSX-traded debentures, I use Questrade.
Questrade
I transferred in my RRSP to Questrade in early 2008 from BMO Investorline. The primary attracting feature was the ability to retain US dollars in the account and not having to incur currency exchange fees whenever you transacted in US securities. Just as an example, ignoring commissions, if you bought USD$1000 of something, and then sold it the next day, you would probably pay around $40 of implied currency conversion charges at BMO Investorline. With Questrade, this is nothing, assuming you had the US currency in the account to begin with.
If you bought USD$10,000 of something and sold it the next day, your typical currency conversion charges (going from CAD to USD and USD to CAD) would be around $400 – with Questrade, it is nothing. For anybody transacting in US dollar securities in their RSP, it is an essential feature.
The RSP transfer took about a month. It also took them another couple months to refund the RSP transfer fee, but they explained this up-front.
The web-based interface for Questrade is very simple – it is missing a basic feature of “how much will this entire transaction cost” whenever previewing an order, but other than this, it is OK. The problem is mitigated by using a desktop calculator. They provide a better platform for active traders, but I have never used it and probably never will. They provide three separate logins for account information and trading, but once you’ve bookmarked them, it is surprisingly easy to get detailed access to your information. In particular, their clearing is performed via the Pension Financial Corporation, and the historical account information they provide through this interface is comprehensive. I can easily see how people that are not as “in-tune” with web navigation would find this system very confusing.
Costs at Questrade are very cheap – basically a trade costs $1 per 100 shares, minimum of $5, maximum of $10. They are also the cheapest Canadian broker to trade TSX-traded debentures – basically the standard commission charges (as if you were trading stocks) applies – so it would be about $10/trade. Most other brokerages charge around $40 per trade, plus $1.50 per $1000 par value – which could make trades very expensive. Questrade does not charge any inactivity fees or any other “garbage” fees, but something people should be aware of are fees for taking liquidity away from the market (i.e. buying at the ask, or selling at the bid) which would amount to material sums if you are dealing with penny stocks.
Questrade’s margin rates currently (as of January 4, 2011) are 4.5% for Canadian dollars, which is prime plus 1.5%. They generally are in line with other “big name” brokerages (e.g. BMO Investorline is at 4.25% or prime plus 1.25%), but both do not come close to Interactive Brokers.
I have no problems with Questrade customer support – they have an online web-chat interface and sometimes it takes awhile to get a customer support agent, but once you do get on with them, they are fairly responsive. I suspect most of the people that have complained about Questrade (and there are a lot of financial forums that have supremely negative reviews on them) didn’t have a clue what they were doing (e.g. dealing with Canadian vs. US dollar securities, or wondering why their shares got sold out when they had a margin call).
Deposits and withdrawals are simple – provide the EFT information, and a few button clicks is what it takes to fund accounts or withdraw funds from accounts. The withdraws typically take three business days to process, and I have always received my funds promptly.
For a simple buy-and-hold investor, Questrade seems to be a decent and low-cost provider. They aren’t going to win any awards for any of the other ancillary services brokerages provide (research, fancy interface, hand-holding customers), but if you don’t care about those, they serve the job very adequately for RRSP and TFSA accounts. I have no idea how they are for active traders.
Questrade’s inadequate security
The reason why I can’t give a blanket endorsement of Questrade is security – they do not offer any sort of guarantee (e.g. BMO Investorline’s Online Security Guarantee) against hackers, and unlike Interactive Brokers, if somebody managed to rip off your username and password, they can do a lot of financial damage to your account. This is my biggest concern with Questrade, and it is a sufficiently high concern that I wish they would offer some sort of guarantee against hacked accounts, and/or provide an account authentication system that is similar to Interactive Brokers. In addition, Questrade is privately held and as a result, one has no idea how financially solvent they are. Although Canadian investors are protected through CIPF, you do not want to have to reclaim your assets through this mechanism.
The reader might wonder why I am concerned about an issue that has not materialized for me – I am very cognizant of potential risks. I do not want to have to suffer through a security incident before taking measures that will protect me. I do not believe Questrade takes security seriously enough beyond the typical lip service of telling its customers to “run a firewall and a virus scanner” and as a result, some of its customers will have their accounts compromised. Although I am very computer-savvy and it is unlikely that a phishing scam will get my username and password, it could happen and I want a form of protection beyond a username/password combination to make sure that my account is protected. Questrade does not offer this.
Until they provide better provisions with respect to account security and provide some more transparency on their own financial solvency, I only will give them a tepid recommendation. The only reason why I use them is they support RRSP/TFSAs well and they allow inexpensive trades on TSX-traded debentures. If they beefed up their security, I would rate them much more highly than present. I just don’t get that warm and fuzzy secure feeling that I do with Interactive Brokers.
Unlike practically all other financial blogs out there, I won’t insult you (the reader) by offering some referral scheme, which they do offer – I do these reviews without remuneration.
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for anyone that reads this bs review. let me save you a big headache and stress. if you care about your money avoid questrade stay as far from them as possible and use a reputable company, although they sell themselves for cheap this scam organization will cost you heavy in the long run from no customer support to online systems that don’t work correctly nothing but problems. there plenty of other organizations out there. good luck
Dave:
You have not stated any specifics of why you call Questrade a “scam organization”. Can you elaborate?
I have been with questrade for a year and a half. I have been getting a little frustrated with them as of late.
1) I did a refer a friend promo, which he signed up and followed all the appropriate steps and still has an account. However I have been fighting to get my promo credits and they have using excuses why they haven’t fulfilled their promo. I have talked to many reps on line and it sounds like it will get rectified but nothing ever happens.
2) they use to have a trade confimation sent out via email, notifing you a trade was exsecuted. However they have dropped that service and now you have to log in and check.
3) it’s been a while that I have seen a $4.95 trade, seems like it’s always $9.95 now. I think they changed their pricing formula.
The Service Reps are incompetent, probably the worst of any broker, period.
Transferring funds to them electronically takes more than 2 days, whereas any other broker takes 2 hours, some only 30 minutes.
The reps are normally unwilling to even consider looking at anything other than their system, they’ll tell you there is nothing they can do. (When they should be contacting the other departments)
Not as good broker if you have issues!
Out of the issues I’ve had with Questrade, getting money in and out of them has not been a problem.
In my opinion, the security concern as I listed in this article remains their biggest problem. While I have not had any compromises of my accounts with them, I shudder to think what may happen if it did occur. With Interactive Brokers, security compromises are very difficult with their security architecture, which involves two-factor authentication.
Thanks for the info, I’m looking for an on-line broker so I can drop TD Waterhouse, their inactivity fees and commission fees have gotten to be too expensive! I was considering Questrade until now. Can you recommend any other on-line service that’s more secure? Thanks
Irene
I was actively considering signing up with Questrade, being new to this business. Can anyone suggest other online traders’ one can consider?
their service sucks,they dont return calls,emails,rude,not effieient.i like td waterhouse better.i am going back to td sine questrade screw my account on feb 4th 2011 with the change in software,i could not see my position in my account for 1 week,their reply was we cannot do anything about it and made me loose money.
I have not found one person to say that they are satisfied with Questrade & their customer service. This company is THE WORST NIGHTMARE you could imagine – to deal with.
Try calling them – they do not answer for hours
- If you email -they do not answer for days or do not answer at all
- try live chat – most of the time does not work
- eventually if you get someone on the phone – person is plain lying to you or can not help or do not know anything
- THEY ARE RUDE AND OBNOXIOUS
BEWARE – STAY AWAY !!!!
From what I read, Questrade is insecure, but I thought it is by law that that all Canadian broker must buy insurance for unexpected events, such as bankruptcy and fraud. As well, all Canadian brokers are highly regulated. From my experience with other brokers, customer service is important but useless because phone representatives will usually have excuses to defend their positions. For example, if you ask them why the money is still not transfer to X account, they may say . . . oh it’s normal to take a few days to process the transaction. At the end, it’s all about transaction cost (including commission, hidden fees, inactivity fees, data fees, deposit fees, etc) since you are investing on your own!
BEWARE OF QUESTRADE GUYS! SEE A SUMMARY OF MY EXPERIENCE BELOW. I AM REALLY FRUSTRATED WITH THEM.
Please refer to my previous e-mail below. I really don’t think your support guys or the people taking care of online requests know what they are doing. I have set up a withdrawal request since Feb 16 and nothing has happened till now. Your online page showed my request was completed by you since Feb16 (see below) but no money was deposited into my account. Sometimes I call your phone and kept waiting for 4 hours without any response. If you guys don’t know what you are doing I don’t think you should be in business. If closing my account will facilitate the withdrawal of my money can you advice and let me know. I need the money urgently and it is ridiculous that this is happening.
Yes, Quetrade is FRUSTRATING!!!! The way I look at it is that nothing comes for free. There has to be a reason why they charge $4.95/9.95 for a trade as compared to $30 at ScotiaMacleod. I will give them a year and see how things go, but I am unlikely to go to back to $30.
Yes, I am concerned about security, but now I know there is CIPF. It may take me long to get my money back, I at least now I know, I will eventually get it back.
After my TFSA, my RRSP is next to transfer to Questrade.
Questrade is a vaccum, have spent months trying to sort out the membership (their error) of our investment club! We have been with Questrade since 2006, their answer to our problem… sorry you will have to have to start again and create a new account (re-doing all the applications). I just don’t get it, when I make an error… I take the time to fix it!
Frustrating…
would never recommend questrade. after they changed their software unable to log on to their interface for 3 weeks, after numerous times calling them and being on hold for an hour each time and their live chat waiting even longer finally found out that not compatible with safari was able to logon. then their lack of fixed income, decided to change to cibc with their 6.95 trading. started transfer process on feb 14, funds still not transferred on MARCH 31. and not willing to wait hours on the phone again.
STAY AWAY
GO SOMEWHERE THAT HAS COSTUMER SERVICE CAUSE
QUESTRADE DOESN’T
I chose Questrade because of its low fees. As a relatively passive investor (mostly ETFs, nothing complicated) I didn’t think I would need a lot of bells and whistles, so the rough edges on Questrade’s platform didn’t particularly bother me, and I was (naively) confident that any serious glitches that might come up would be professionally addressed.
I opened an account with Questrade earlier this spring and have since experienced nothing but problems. Simple matters (such as receiving credit my promotional free trades) were a headache – not to mention serious errors in their system such as transfers from my bank account which were, erroneously, processed in duplicate. The straw that broke the camel’s back, however, was when Questrade sold all of my stocks in a particularly company at $2.00 ABOVE the price of my stop order. To make matters worse, the sell took place just before the ex-dividend date, rendering me ineligible for the dividend on my stocks that quarter. Having followed the stock price, I knew there was no reason my order should have been executed. Since Questrade has no e-mail alert or other notification system when orders are executed, I did not notice the sale until days later and immediately filed a complaint.
After two weeks of contacting them by e-mail, on-line chat, and by telephone, the excuse I was given is that I had submitted an “all or none” stop order, therefore the price at which I had set the order did not apply. As far as I am concerned that is entirely moot – Questrade did not have my authorization to sell my stocks at that price under any circumstances. I felt robbed.
Not only was my serious concern not resolved, but it took two weeks to get an answer of any kind, after which I was essentially told by telephone that I didn’t understand the situation and that my concern was unreasonable.
This is not the type of fly-by-night organization to which I wish to entrust my life savings any longer, and I have told them so. I encourage others to avoid this company like the plague. The savings in commissions are not worth the headaches, technical glitches, and risks associated with trading with this brokerage.
Stay away from questrade. I have been trying to transfer my account from another brokerage since March and still they have not transferred everything. The support staff speak a different language and have a hard time understanding what is being said. Incompetent to say the least. Dont waste your time or give yourself grief.
Questrade is the worst brokerage in canada!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i have had many issues with them and the last one got me out of my mind: i had 100 shares long . the stock started moving down and i decided to sell it and take a small loss( about $200) but my orders were rejected for not enough shares. i had enough shares but it kept rejecting my order so i called the trading desk .it took over 8 minutes to correct the error on their side and the trade rep came back on the line to say: Ok sir now you are able to sell your shares. the loss was 703 dollars. i spoke to managers for over an hour and was offered $50 credit. now i am in the process ofcancelling my account. TO EVERYONE WHO IS CONSIDERING QUESTRADE I SAY STAY AWAY as not only their platforms are a big failure, they have the worst customer service ever. dont go after the 4.95 commision fee like i did because u are going to regret your decision
TO ANYONE CONSIDERING QUESTRADE PLEASE READ : I opened a new account with questrade on October 20,2011 and have been having issues with the platform ever since. I brought the issues to the customer service attention who in turn forwarded it to technical support but to no avail.
I logged in to my platform at 7:55AM and found an open long position 100 shares and open short position of 100 shares sitting together in my account box both at the same price. Since i did not hold any positions in my account from the previous day, i called the trading desk and a trader said that they will take care of the problem and not to worry. I called back at 9:22 AM and spoke to another trader about the situation and asked why nothing had been done yet. He put me on hold. Few minutes after waiting on hold the shares disappered from the account box and a minute later the trader came back on the line and said that it has been solved by the back office, i confirmed that.
Later in the morning, i encountered a system error that cost me $703. Here are the details: On Nov 22, 2011 at 10:26 AM i bought 100 shares of pcln (open long). At 10:43 i tried to get out of my position and sell my pcln shares and the system kept rejecting my order for ” NOT ENOUGH SHARES” even though i owned 100 shares in my account. I tried that eight times but the orders were all rejected on the groung that i dont have enough shares.
I realised that there is a system problem and called the trading desk and explained the problem. I was on hold for over ten minutes while the stock kept going down before the trader came back to tell me : ok sir we solved the problem and now you are able to sell your shares, so i asked what happened(sold the shares while talking with a loss of $703) and he said that the shares were allocated and that he had to contact the back office to solve the issue. I asked him who’s fault this is and he answered that it is an error on their side.
The trader explained that i have to speak to customer service to see if they will take responsibility of the system negligence.Long story short, after begging the unexperienced customer service representative to transfer to a supervisor, i was FINALLY transfered to a supervisor who disappointed me more than the system error. During our long conversation the manager was talking nonsense and was making things worse not better by blaming me for the error and that i have to wait a duration of time after cancelling an order in the account box to place another one (he did not specify but said definitely more than one or two seconds) and came up with a conclusion that this is why the shares went allocated. I asked for a credit of $468 supposing that if things went well and my order was placed, i would have lost $235 and not $703 and to consider the number of trades i have excuted since i joined questrade about a month ago(paid approx.$1400 in commission fees) . He refused and offered me $50 instead.
AN EMAIL HAS BEEN SENT TO SENIOR COMPLIANCE MANAGER ADAM Akretschmann , WHO’S GOT 14 YEARS OF EXPERINCE IN THE FIELD!! I WILL KEEP YOU UPDATED
I have read all the comments on the web site as I am half way in completing my application form with them, I was a active trader in my country of origin before I became a Canadian citizen, now I find the banks in Canada charge commission which is unheard of in other parts of the world where Trading is far more and extensive not to forget the number of companies traded and the volumes! why does Canada have such a expensive way of dealing with every thing from buying a Cell phone plan to starting to Trade Stocks! its all not properly priced!, anyway coming back to Questrade, I am now afraid to even go ahead with them even after reading great things about them on , but maybe they did not interview individual traders who have given their personal opinions on this web site. Thank you all for that.
Now my concern is there is no economical broker or bank who a small time trader can consider? I find Interactive Brokers as my last hope! I have opened a Registered account with TD but the commission is mind boggling! I have to pay $60 for a Buy-Sell!!!
Please recommend any other Broker companies I should consider? Is I-Trade by Scotia bank good? there commission is I believe 19.99 which is $10 less than TD.
Pleae advise
Scotia ITrade is 24.99 if you hold 50000$ or less otherwise it is 9.99 like all other major banks. CIBC has same type of fees but have Loyaltee Program where if you hold 100K in any CIBC products (incl mortgage) then you are eligible to 6.95 flat fee$ I have been looking around lately as well since I am getting sick at paying 60$ round trip. I am with you on exagerated fees we pay in Canada which are generally much cheaper in other countries.
I am looking at Questrade too but I am a little bit uncertain about all the bad comments I have read. I was thinking opening TFSA with small amount to try out the service. I have been playing with the Questrade demo and find the application could be improved. For instance if you buy stocks then it does not indicate how much the transaction would be total. I just don’t understand why they would not be able to give amount even approximate since we can’t be sure in advance how much we end buying or selling the stocks in question.
Interactive Brokers appears to be more professional but I think it is platform for active traders and they are mainly US company thus not offering canadian TFSA.
The online canadian brokerage firms are quite disapointing in terms of cost and even at 9.95$, I think they are laughing at us.
Have been using Questrade for one year and have not had any problems so far with trading stock and options. I am not an active trader by any means.
Started to balance the trades and have found a few things that I did not know about.
The CAD account had no issues as I funded CAD account.
I did use my margin account with USD trade and did not realize on each trade there is conversion fees. For 6 trades it cost me $45 even though I made gains on the stock trades. I now do not use the USD margin so I don’t incur the conversion fees. This is my own misunderstanding on how it works.
For majority of my trades it has been $4.95 (there are instances where ECA fees but these are something like 35 cents per trade ), $9.95 + $1 for each contract for options and $12.95 from closing expiry options . These fees are posted on there website. Therefore the stock trade and option trades I have not had any issues.
It did take 5 business days to fund my account through EFT which was a little disappointing. Haven’t transferred out as yet. When I do I will make another post.
Overall I have been satisfied with Questrade so far. I did use TDW before but found the fee way too high for the amount of money I have even though their platform is better.
Thanks to all who replied about Questrade and I appreciate your suggestions and comments. I have come across Disnat a brokearage firm which has been voted by JD Power and Associates as the best, the commission rates are pretty comfortable if you mantain the trades at minimum 10 per month. The company even allows demo for 15 days and the minimum amount to start with is 10000. The Registered accounts has charges and fees to maintain and that I am not so keen about. The platform and the education webinars are all upto the mark. The company is a part of Desjardins group and was mainly focused in Montreal but now has a presence in Toronto also. Try it and send your comments
try optionsxpress. best rated at #2 for trader