Author Topic: Company match RRSP, can they dictate where I invest?  (Read 1160 times)

moustacheverte

  • Stubble
  • **
  • Posts: 145
  • Age: 37
  • Location: Switzerland
Company match RRSP, can they dictate where I invest?
« on: October 03, 2016, 04:07:13 PM »
When an employer has a program to match your RRSP investments, can they force you to invest with a specific brokerage in a specific fund? I don't really care for their high fee low interest RBC RRSP, I'd rather take the match and invest it myself elsewhere with much lower expenses and better returns.

Of course HR wasn't very helpful because no one ever asked. Thoughts?

meghan88

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 834
  • Location: Montreal
Re: Company match RRSP, can they dictate where I invest?
« Reply #1 on: October 03, 2016, 06:44:12 PM »
Usually, employers in Canada offer that type of program through a provider like Sun Life, Great-West Life, Manulife, etc. and you have to enroll in that plan to get the matching. 

You could try to insist on your own plan but frankly, if I was an employer, I'd go nuts trying to manage deposits to [X] number of different employee RRSPs, which is why I'm quite sure they wouldn't agree to do it.

The next best thing is to enroll in their plan up to the maximum match amount, then transfer funds out every now and then.  Caveat:  I did a transfer recently and was not able to transfer the amount that my employer contributed - only the amount that I contributed.

In the end, you get to keep the amount they matched plus whatever return you can get on it, even if the return isn't that great.  But it's better than no match at all.