Financial Product Reviews

BMO SmartFolio is an online investment portfolio management service offered by Bank of Montreal. What sets them apart from other services like theirs is that they use dedicated expert advisors to manage your account (instead of pure algorithms like most robo advisors), while maintaining low management fees for their services.

The Buggy Delivery App is a grocery delivery service with its own Buggy Bucks rewards system, which gets you points as you spend money on the app. You also get the ability to order up to 30 days in advance, and with delivery (sometimes) available in as little as 15 minutes for the service's own Buggy Stores and 1 hour for grocery stores, it’s an interesting service.

In a world where grocery delivery is becoming increasingly popular (for reasons of both convenience and safety), you might wonder what PC Express is all about. It’s not a delivery service at all, really, but an order-fulfillment-for-pickup service. Is this better than just doing your own grocery shopping?

Your home is important to you, so you want to make sure your home insurance company will be there for you when you need them. The Co-operators provides quality home insurance with consistently high satisfaction ratings. Their network of financial advisors is backed by over 5,000 employees, making them one of the leaders in Canadian property insurance.

As you can probably guess, TD Insurance is the insurance subsidiary of TD Bank. They’re an all-purpose insurance company selling home and auto insurance, as well as life and health insurance. As one of the largest home insurance companies in Canada, owned by one of the largest banks in Canada, they’re a safe and secure choice for insuring your home.

RBC is one of Canada’s oldest and largest banks. If you’re an RBC customer and are purchasing a home, it’s logical to consider RBC for your insurance needs as well. As with all Canadian banks, you can’t buy home insurance from your local branch. You’ll need to speak to an insurance agent, over the phone or through an RBC Insurance Store location.

Paymi Rewards is a cash back app and website that provides up to 10% cash back returns for online and in-store shoppers. The number of retailers varies, but they claim hundreds of partners at the time of writing.

Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) are similar to mutual funds, but are bundles of securities that are listed on exchanges, and whose shares trade like an ordinary stock. BMO offers a large number of ETFs you can use to diversify your investment portfolio. You can invest in these either through their investment services, through a robo-advisor service, or through a self-directed investment platform, such as BMO’s InvestorLine.

Mutual funds are a diversified investment in which a pool of money from multiple investors is collected and professionally managed. This is often seen as a decent way to diversify your portfolio, though you should keep an eye on any hidden fees. Most banks have an investing arm that offers mutual funds, including BMO.

BMO RRSPs give you a variety of options for investing in your retirement, including portfolios, 3 types of GICs, mutual funds, and more. You can even open an RRSP account through BMO InvestorLine, if you prefer a more hands-on approach to investing.