GoSmart is part of RBC’s strategy to create a pipeline of future wealth management customers as “the cornerstone of RBC Direct Investing’s growth strategy, as we aim to double our market share of early-stage investors by 2029,” Dimitri Busevs, president and CEO of RBC Direct Investing, said in an email.
“Our goal is to meet new and early-stage investors where they are, provide them with a simplified self-directed investing solution, and support them in growing their wealth over time,” he added.
The first 50 trades of each year are commission free, and cost $9.95 for Canadian equities and US$9.95 for U.S. equities per trade thereafter. A lesser fee of $6.95 (CAD or USD) per trade applies when the investor makes 150 or more trades per quarter. But the majority of retail investors make fewer than 50 trades a year, Busevs said.
Unlimited commission-free trades apply to 53 ETFs, all from RBC’s iShares product list. These ETFs include equity, fixed income and multi-asset products, as well as gold, silver, bitcoin and ethereum ETFs.
Clients can set up recurring investments to four commission-free ETFs and can stop, pause or resume them at any time in the app. They are the iShares Core Equity ETF Portfolio (XEQT), iShares Core Growth ETF (XGRO), iShares Core Balanced ETF (XBAL) and iShares Core Conservative Balanced ETF (XCNS).
However, for more established investors, RBC recommends its full-suite direct investing option, which additionally offers trading in RESP, RRIF, margin and business or trust accounts. Investors can also access mutual funds, GICs, bonds and options, which aren’t available in GoSmart. The full-suite option doesn’t offer 50 free trades a year; fees are the same as GoSmart.
RBC’s new launch comes as big banks face fiercer competition. Over half of Canadians who opened a bank account with an institution other than their existing bank in the past 12 months did so online, according to a March 2025 survey conducted by Environics Research.
Last April, online investment platform Wealthsimple bought a San Francisco wealth management platform with the intention to expand product offerings. It shored up its chequing account and launched a credit card in June, and began offering direct indexing portfolios that can tax-loss harvest in October.
This article has been updated with GoSmart’s available account types.