Continuous improvement: the Qtrade difference
As Canadians continue to take control of their finances through self-directed investing, Qtrade Direct Investing™ has stood out as a top-ranked broker year after year, recently receiving an ‘A’ grade in Rob Carrick’s digital brokerage rankings by The Globe and Mail, and being named #1 in Service Experience by Surviscor. With scores on multiple criteria like commissions and fees, available account types and customer service, these recognitions highlight our mission of helping everyone invest confidently.
To quote Rob Carrick of the Globe and Mail, “Unlike other brokers, Qtrade never coasts.” And it’s true. We are always looking for how we can improve our offerings and build the confidence of Qtraders to build their wealth. We value your feedback and continually use it to better shape what we offer and enhance our commitment to continuous improvement.
Here are a few of the great things we’ve introduced that have led to Qtrade consistently being recognized as a leader in the online brokerage space by organizations like the Globe & Mail and Surviscor.
Refreshing our Help Centre
Empowering Qtraders to write their own future means we need to provide them with the information they need to have the best investing experience. We launched our new Help Centre last year with a completely redesigned user experience, FAQs organized based on topics and popular questions and a search bar to find specific answers quickly.
We combined this with our Answer Bot, so you no longer need to contact customer support when seeking answers to common questions about our platform. It takes user inquiries and searches our FAQ database to surface answers to commonly asked questions in English and French, so you can quickly and easily find solutions 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Helping you build responsible portfolios
We’ve seen that Qtraders are more interested than ever in building responsible portfolios, so we’ve made Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) a key focus as we innovate and improve our platform. If you’re looking to incorporate more ESG focus into your investing, our Portfolio Score tool offers portfolio analysis with an ESG lens.
The ESG score shows how individual stocks or funds contribute to your portfolio’s overall ESG score and a percentile ranking against the stock or fund’s peer group. A higher score indicates stocks or funds that are better at managing the risks and opportunities associated with ESG factors, including pollution prevention, human rights, disclosure practices and more.
For investors looking to adjust their portfolio, our Portfolio Simulator also includes the ESG score of your simulated portfolio and compares it to your current portfolio.
Offering educational resources
With the influx of new Qtraders following the stock trading boom of 2021 and the volatile markets of 2022, we’ve focused on creating more educational content that provides perspective and helps instill confidence in new investors as they weather more turbulent markets. We share a variety of content on our social media accounts and regularly publish informative content in our Education section.
Expediting the account funding process
Enabling Qtraders to get funded quickly and easily is critical to success. That’s why we’ve simplified the process for electronic funds transfers for Qtrade accounts—no need to worry about scanning and uploading a void cheque to add funds. You can now connect directly to your financial institution to add money to your account quickly and easily through Electronic Fund Transfers (EFTs).
Keeping your accounts secure
Your protection is always a top priority for us. We have several key security measures in place, including timed log-offs, powerful firewall protection, 256-bit encryption support, and constant surveillance of the security and access control systems. All Qtrade accounts also require Two-Factor Authentication (2FA), an extra layer of security that helps prevent anyone who’s not you from accessing your account, even if they have the password. Once set up, you can enable trusted devices. Any login from another device will trigger an alert and require approval, giving better protection against cybercriminals. We also added a voice call option to support these enhanced security measures for more users, allowing you to set up multiple verification devices: mobile for text and/or call or landline for a call.
Expanding opportunities for investments
2022 saw an increase in interest for GICs for investors, and we responded accordingly. We introduced additional GIC issuers based on demand to ensure you could take advantage of these investment opportunities.
We’ve also expanded the hours clients can make US market trades. Pre-market trading is available from 8:30-9:29 am ET, and after-hours trading is available from 4:00-5:00 pm ET online and via phone, to make it even easier to take advantage of market moving events.
Enhancing our research tools
Our new premium research tools, Analyst Ratings and News, allow you to make more confident investment decisions with Analyst Ratings and News insights to assess stocks in your portfolio or those under consideration for investment. Through our dashboard, you can quickly lookup a stock to see recent analyst consensus (from strong buy to strong sell), price forecasting, and ratings for specific stocks with the Analyst Ratings, or head to the News tab to get headlines, links and view overall sentiment of recent coverage.
We feel more confident than ever we’re uniquely positioned to help Canadian investors who want to take control of their finances. We are excited to continue to find new ways to help you write your financial future with the tools, experience, and support you need to invest with confidence.