I’m not very knowledgeable when it comes to investing, so I’m hoping for some guidance. A few months ago, I switched my RRSP to RBC InvestEase and selected the socially responsible portfolio because I wanted my investments to better reflect my values. Recently, I started receiving letters from iShares (BlackRock) thanking me for my investment. I didn’t realize that my money would be going through BlackRock, and I’m not comfortable with that. What are my options if I want my RRSP to: Be managed by a Canadian company Invest primarily or exclusively in Canadian organizations Follow socially responsible investing principles Is this something I can request through RBC, or would I need to move my RRSP elsewhere? Thanks in advance for any advice.
I’ve got about half my investments in NBC750 - NBI Canadian Equity Index Fund which I don’t THINK has any shares through BlackRock.
I’ve got another half in an international index (NBC755), but I think it has around 4% of its value in a blackrock iShares ETF.
Both of mine I done through QTrade, which I think is Canadian (although its so hard to keep track these days).
Find an ETF that matches what you want. You don’t need to move your account.
Find several ETF that will suit you best. One of my safe ones is bk-c. Canadian banks.
RBC has Canada only mutual funds, so yes.
I don’t know what’s InvestEase, but what you can do is open a self-directed investment account. You can open one with RBC or another big bank, but Wealthsimple and Questrade also provide these as someone else mentioned.
Once you have a self-directed investment account, you can buy ETFs. RBC and Blackrock seem to have some kind of deal where RBC leads you to buy Blackrock ETFs instead of making similar ones of their own. If you’re fine with this, look at ETF XCSR. If you’d rather have ETFs from a Canadian issuer, wikipedia has a list. I can’t guess what your specific values are so you’ll have to shop around in the list.
I just did this in the past weeks, as I was in a US growth fund. I just asked the bank rep to give me ideas on minimizing US exposure. But I’m with a credit Union so they are super helpful and not like a major bank (like TD or Scotia ) that tries to force you into funds that benefit them
You will have to self direct to do this. Open an account with one of the commission-free places, like Wealthsimple or Questrade. Anything that’s overseen by an advisor will have international equity allocations, including exposure the country to our south. They are in the middle of a historically unprecedented bubble, so I mean this is the debate you’ll have to have internally with yourself. I don’t want to invest with them either, but putting your (very obviously legitimate) hard feelings aside for a moment and thinking objectively, thats where the return is being found right now.
This is your retirement after all, and it’s not necessarily your job or responsibility to be the moral superman of the planet. No one’s going to look after you, or care about what your investments were in, and if they are going to financially rape and pillage and unlock supercharged returns through deregulation, which in turn will unlock fraud and capitalism at the cost of just about everything good, I mean it’s going to be an all time economic disaster, but a good advisor will want you to be exposed to that, because there are returns to be made.
Ain’t saying what you are wanting to do is bad (it’s very much not), or wrong, but you do have to look at this from all angles, and it’s important that you do because it affects your future well-being, long after all of this is (hopefully) over.
