Investoid

In the past 8 years I’ve used four different brokerages - both for professional and personal purposes. As a result I’ve learned a bit about the what the industry has to offer, but by no means have comprehensive knowledge on how all the brokerages work. I am going to start reviewing about the brokerages I’ve used. I’ll start off with CIBC Investor’s Edge.

I started using CIBC in late 2006 after I received my buyout for my wife’s and my RRSP plans. I was attracted to their offering due to their low cost (free if you meet their account minimum) self-directed accounts, and the fact that it was easy to transfer money into the accounts from our PC Financial bank accounts.

The Investor’s Edge website is fairly functional. Trading is intuitive, although I don’t like how many steps you have to take to get real-time quotes. Like most browser-based trading systems, you must hit refresh to get updated quotes, which is a real pain after you’ve used push-based systems that update when a trade is made or a new bid/ask offer is placed. An auto-refresh feature that can be set to 1-60 seconds would be helpful.

In terms of trading fees, the costs are in line with that other big bank brokerages charge, which means they are relatively high. I’m not planning on doing a lot of trading in my RRSP accounts due to the long term buy & hold strategy I have, so for me trading costs don’t have to be the lowest available.

A big feature of the self-directed accounts is that you get access to some good S&P stock research (mostly for US equities), as well as all of CIBC’s analyst coverage. I’ve found this to be an excellent resource, as I can now get more professional opinion at the touch of a button. I use this in conjunction with what I have available through my TD Waterhouse business trading account to get a more complete picture on stocks I’m analyzing or to identify macro trends.

I have enjoyed CIBC’s customer service as well. I have called them repeatedly over the past few months and have had to wait no more than 2 minutes to get a real person on the phone. In most cases I have had immediate contact with a person, which is a very nice feature. Their staff has been relatively knowledgeable and friendly.

I did have one issue with them recently regarding my Home Buyers Plan withdrawal. I had faxed in my withdrawal application last month and wanted to ensure I would have adequate time to get my funds to our bank. I called back a week later to see how things were progressing and I was under the impression that everything was fine. When nothing had moved another 10 days later, I started to get worried. It turns out that the fax had never been received. Needless to say I was a little miffed, especially since my house closed in 7 days (6 now). When I explained this in a cover letter for my fax, CIBC promptly transferred the funds. While I was frustrated with their error, I appreciated their quick reaction to the situation.

Overall I have enjoyed CIBC’s service and plan on continuing to use them for my RRSP plan.