Two million people trust their more than $14 billion in assets to Personal Capital, an app that is available to users in the United States. The Personal Capital app is becoming increasingly popular as the organization behind the app defines itself as trustworthy and helpful.
They created the application in hopes of providing a digital financial advisor for users. In fact, their financial planning portion of the app is completely free.
But, what about Personal Capital Canada? Does such a thing exist? And, if not, what can Canadians use to mimic the automated personal finance management that comes with Personal Capital?
To learn the answers to these questions and more, keep reading.
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What Is Personal Capital?
As we briefly explained, Personal Capital is a digital asset management service. It helps connect users to financial planners and allows them to use the financial planning portion of their application for free.
Although the organization behind the app doesn't like the term, many experts liken the experience to having a robo-advisor. However, the application combines robo-advisor algorithms with human advisors to personalize each user's experience.
Is Personal Capital in Canada?
Unfortunately, Personal Capital is not available in Canada. In order to open an account with Personal Capital, you must be a United States citizen or resident alien/permanent resident. So, if you're a newcomer to Canada or an existing Canadian citizen, you're going to need to find an alternative.
Those who live in Canada will not have access to this application and everything that comes with it. And, there are no current plans to expand Personal Capital's services to a Canadian audience.
Personal Finance Management in Canada
If you live in Canada and want to find an alternative to Personal Capital, there are several options to choose from. There are plenty of Canadian personal finance apps, but you may need to use multiple apps to get the same effect that Personal Capital would provide on its own.
Let's first start with robo-advisors. These advanced algorithms help individuals balance their portfolios, reach individual financial goals, evaluate risk tolerance, and more. Here are a few of the most popular applications featuring robo-advisors:
- Wealthsimple Invest
- CI Direct Investing
- Justwealth
- Moka
If you're interested in trading stocks, you'll be able to use Wealthsimple Trade for both. Here are a few more applications that focus on stock trading apart from robo-advising:
- CIBC Investor's Edge
- Interactive Brokers
- Questrade
- Scotia iTrade
These are all great choices that can replace certain aspects of the Personal Capital app. However, there is one Canadian app that stands above the rest.
Let's introduce you to Wealthica.
Wealthica Review: A Quick Look
Wealthica allows you to see anything and everything regarding your finances in one place. You can use their portfolio analysis tool to look at investments and other financial accounts that you may have with several different financial institutions.
And, best of all, the application is free to use.
However, there is a paid version of the application. But, there are no fees for tracking your financial portfolio.
You can also invest in add-ons. These can help your track your net worth easily.
Overall, you can conduct several activities with the free version of the app:
- Track your net worth by connecting financial accounts
- Review income reports
- Track cryptocurrency
- Review performance reports for investments
- Create a budget and track your created budget
- Create and review balance sheets
- Review fees reports in relation to investments
- Modify the application to suit your personal financial needs
We should also note that Wealthica uses bank-level security to ensure that their users' information is stored securely. Wealthica is for tracking purposes only. You aren't able to manipulate, move, or remove money using the application.
Canadian Robo-Advisors vs. Personal Capital
In Canada, there are several applications to choose from that use robo-advisors. However, you may be wondering how they compare to Personal Capital for United States citizens.
Here, we're going to compare Personal Capital to the following four popular robo-advisor applications:
- Wealthsimple Invest
- CI Direct Investing
- Justwealth
- Moka
1. Wealthsimple Invest
Wealthsimple Invest allows its users to invest. Using robo-advising, the application gives its users several low-fee options for investments. After answering questions about risk, investment goals, age, and more, their algorithm chooses the best portfolios for you.
Wealthsimple Invest allows you to invest with any amount of money, while Personal Capital requires a minimum of $100,000 in investments. So, this application is more accessible to the average user.
2. CI Direct Investing
Like Personal Capital, CI Direct Investing combines robo-advising and human financial advisors. However, all of their financial planning features are not completely free.
The fees that you pay include private investment portfolios, personal financial advisors, and financial planning features.
So, you'll get a more personalized experience, but it will come at a small cost.
3. Justwealth
Justwealth is an investment application that requires its users to invest $5,000 at a minimum. Just like with Personal Capital, you can use their combination of robo-advising and human financial advisors to create the right financial portfolio for you and your needs.
Justwealth offers low-fee investing to its users and offers general wealth management services.
4. Moka
Moka is geared more towards saving money over time in the form of savings accounts, investment accounts, and charity. The application will automatically round up what you're spending and put that extra money towards one of these three avenues.
If you have trouble investing or saving large amounts of money at once, Moka can help you do this a little bit at a time. And, because it uses your spare change, it's unlikely that you'll even notice that the money is being taken out of your accounts.
Wealthica and Robo-Advisor: The Personal Capital of Canada
All in all, Wealthica has established itself as the Personal Capital of Canada. The application is extremely close to its US-based counterpart. And, it provides Canadian citizens with the financial help and advice that they need to make informed, intelligent decisions about their financial accounts.
Wealthica offers many of the same features that Personal Capital does and even includes add-ons for users who don't want to invest long-term into the premium version of their services. Instead, these add-ons provide an array of financial services and bonuses that may help them manage and view their money easily.
To wrap up this comparison, we should review the pros and cons that you may experience if you were to use Wealthica. Luckily, there are many advantages to look forward to.
Pros
As we said, Wealthica is so similar to the Personal Capital app in the United States that many people refer to it as the Personal Capital of Canada. So, you'll find that many of these advantages are similar to that of Personal Capital:
- Wealthica is free to sign up and you'll receive bonuses on your birthday and other rewards
- Wealthica is easily synced to companies like Wealthsimple and Questrade
- Wealthica is safe and secure, especially if you're using a company that provides API access, like Questrade, Wealthsimple, CI Direct Investing, or Interactive Brokers
- It sends you an email when there are changes to your account
- You can modify your emails if you want daily or weekly account updates
- Wealthica easily links to Passiv, which is an alternative to robo-advisors
- You can easily check your monthly dividends and current exchange rate
- Wealthica summarizes your commission and trading fees
- Wealthica can help you gather information easily while you're preparing taxes
- You can use the "Family Office" option which allows users to collect their family's net worth profiles
- Wealthica smoothly gathers and presents data from multiple accounts
- It has a private mode for viewing your data around others
- You can manually input extra financial information
The list could go on and on.
Cons
Of course, there are disadvantages to everything. But, there aren't many cons to highlight with Wealthica.
- You have to manually enter liability/mortgage amounts
- There isn't a chat or phone support option
- Wealthica automatically adds all accounts from one log-in
- Welathica tracks only 5 years of investing history from your accounts
Depending on your wants and needs using the application, you may find that some of these 'disadvantages' aren't a hindrance to your uses of the app anyway.
Financial Security
In sum, Personal Capital in Canada does not exist. But, there are plenty of other options for you to choose from. And, Wealthica seems to be the best one by far.
If you're looking into these financial planning applications, it's likely that you're one who cares deeply about your finances. This means that you should care about the kind of bank that you're using.
So, we recommend checking out our bank account comparison page to see if you have the best bank and accounts for your money. Our team here at Insurdinary is dedicated to helping you make the best personal financial decisions.
