The Wealthsimple app in 2024. The company is launching new family-focused products, including a kids and teens account that lets parents pay extra interest on their child’s deposits.Giordano Ciampini/The Canadian Press
Wealthsimple is rolling out a new suite of family-focused financial products as the Toronto-based fintech expands further into everyday banking services.
The company is set to announce the products Thursday at an event in Calgary, including a kids and teens account that allows parents to pay extra interest on their child’s deposits to encourage savings habits.
The new tools are designed to help Canadians “have a single place that grows with them at every stage of life,” said Brett Huneycutt, co-founder and chief product officer at Wealthsimple, in a statement. It will allow couples to combine finances, parents to teach children about money, and adult children to help aging parents manage investments.
The move also highlights growing competition among financial firms to become consumers’ primary financial platform, particularly for younger families.
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The family and money management products have been led by Emily Luk Allen, lead product manager at Wealthsimple.
Ms. Luk Allen joined the company in 2025 after Wealthsimple acquired her team behind Plenty, a San Francisco-based wealth-management platform focused on helping couples financially plan together. Ms. Luk Allen co-founded Plenty with her husband, Channing Allen.
“A big reason why we made the decision to join Wealthsimple was seeing that there was such an opportunity and appetite for building products for couples and families,” said Ms. Luk Allen in an interview.
The kids and teens account, which is expected to launch this fall, includes a chequing account and spending card for children and is structured as a trust account, meaning that it is owned by the parent. Children of any age can be given an account, and it converts into a standard adult account when the child turns 18.
While many large Canadian banks already offer youth banking products, Wealthsimple said its “parent-paid interest” feature is new in the Canadian market. Accounts will have the same savings rate as that of their parents’. On top of that, parents can increase the interest rate earned on a child’s account to whatever level they choose, while paying the difference themselves, with the money automatically transferred from the parents’ account.
The idea came from parents who were already informally rewarding children for saving money by manually calculating and paying them extra interest, Ms. Luk Allen said.
The company is also interested in offering products that would allow Canadians to begin investing in stocks before they turn 18, Ms. Luk Allen said, though such accounts are not currently available in Canada.
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Another product, called Wealthsimple Households and available for clients now, allows users to view household finances across multiple accounts, including chequing accounts, investments and mortgages, whether they are held at Wealthsimple or elsewhere. External accounts can be viewed through the dashboard but not managed from within it.
Users don’t have to share all their accounts with their household, though, Ms. Luk Allen said. They have the option to choose which accounts they want to offer visibility to, while keeping others private, she said.
The company’s authorized trader feature, expected this summer, will allow clients to trade on behalf of another person, such as a spouse or parent.
Ms. Luk said Wealthsimple expects the feature to be commonly used by adult children helping aging parents manage investments, or parents assisting children as they begin investing in early adulthood.
Initially, only authorized users will be able to place trades. Wealthsimple said it plans to eventually expand the feature to allow authorized users to move money for deposits and withdrawals.
