If you’re looking for suggestions on choosing a US-friendly Canadian brokerage for your Canadian accounts, please see this article.

As a crossborder investor, it is important to choose the right US brokerage (or brokerages). Ideally, you’d do this BEFORE moving, as you might find yourself with more options ahead of time — some brokerages allow you to keep accounts while living in Canada, but only to open these accounts while living in the US.

A couple of key pieces of advice before we dive into the details:

1. Laws and policies can change. Thus, the recommendations below are not ironclad. And please let me know if you find that any of the below is out of date.
2. Because things can change, I recommend having accounts at a few Canada-friendly US brokerages, despite the slight complexity this adds. That way, if you need to transfer something out in a hurry, you’re more likely to have a place to transfer it to.
3. Don’t lie about your address (e.g. by using the US address of a friend or family member). Some people do it, but there really isn’t any need.
   • That said, if your brokerage is not Canada-friendly, I would support transferring out the account BEFORE updating your address to a Canadian one.
   • And if you are lying about your address, I’d strongly recommend also using a VPN as I have heard a few stories about non-Canada-friendly brokerages using IP addresses to flag people as being in Canada.

Below, I’ll highlight some of the brokerages that I’ve found to be more Canada-friendly. I’ll also suggest some questions to ask when looking for a potential crossborder brokerage for US accounts.

“Canada-Friendliness” of US Brokerages

Friendly	Somewhat Friendly	Unfriendly
Charles Schwab Interactive Brokers1	Fidelity TIAA	Vanguard

• Friendly – These brokerages allow US persons to open accounts from Canada as new customers.
• Somewhat Friendly – These brokerages allow US persons to keep existing accounts while in Canada. They may also allow existing customers to open new accounts.
• Unfriendly – These brokerages either freeze or close all accounts belonging to US persons in Canada.

By “accounts” in the above, I am primarily referring to retirement accounts. Few US brokerages are willing to hold taxable accounts for non-resident US persons. Some US citizens have kept taxable accounts with both Interactive Brokers and TIAA as Canadian residents, but my general recommendation for taxable accounts is to transfer them to a US-friendly Canadian brokerage. And again, these policies can and do change so please contact these firms directly to confirm.

Crossborder Questions for US Brokerages

Here is a list of questions that I would recommend asking potential brokerages to determine if they are a good fit for crossborder investing.

1. Do you allow US citizens who are Canadian residents to hold taxable accounts and trade in them normally?

Answer we’re looking for: Yes.

This may be tricky to find, but it is possible that TIAA or Interactive Brokers may allow this. Regardless, the good news is that it’s easy to transfer your USD taxable account to a US-friendly Canadian brokerage as a non-taxable event.

2. Do you allow US citizens who are Canadian residents to hold retirement accounts and trade in them normally?

Answer we’re looking for: Yes.

Many US brokerages allow this, including Charles Schwab, Fidelity, and TIAA.

3. Do you allow US citizens who are not US residents to open accounts?

Answer we’re looking for: Yes.

This can also be tricky to find, but I’d recommend checking with Charles Schwab or Interactive Brokers. Other brokerages (like Fidelity) may allow you to open a new retirement account if you have an existing account with them.

If you need to open an IRA account to roll something over into and you’re not having any luck, another possibility would be to use IRA Financial and set up a self-directed IRA. This is a more expensive option than a traditional brokerage, but it could be useful in a pinch.

4. What are your account fees and commission prices?

Answer we’re looking for: As low as possible. All of the brokerages mentioned here are good but, depending on your investments, some might be better than others.

1. Interactive Brokers is a bit less user friendly that the other brokerages referenced here, any may not be suitable for all DIY investors. ↩︎