Canadian Online Brokerage Desktop Experience Review

The Online Brokerage Desktop Experience Review is Surviscor's longest running and most popular review. The review explores a typical desktop-based online investor experience, including both the pre-login and login areas, that evaluates the online journey through each investor process and typical investor experience.

The Latest Rankings

Desktop platforms have been, and continue to be, the main online brokerage investor platform for any firm that has been around longer than five years. In the past two years there has been renewed signs of life in the desktop-based platforms around the industry as firms finally realized that, at a minimum, the older dated sites were in desperate need of design re-builds. In many ways, that trend has been led by bank-owned firms as they needed to enhance bank products and delivery platforms into the most recent digital development standards.
The 2022 Surviscor Canadian Online Brokerage Desktop-based Experience Review took place in November 2022 and audited 12 Canadian Online Brokers exploring a typical laptop/desktop-based online brokerage investing experience, including both the pre-login and secure login areas.
2022 Rank Brokerage Firm Peer Experience Score Full Company Analysis
1 Scotia iTRADE 92 % See Likes & Dislikes
2 Qtrade Direct Investing 91 % See Likes & Dislikes
T-3 TD Direct Investing 88 % See Likes & Dislikes
T-3 Questrade 88 % See Likes & Dislikes
5 RBC Direct Investing 82 % See Likes & Dislikes
6 BMO InvestorLine 80 % See Likes & Dislikes
7 CIBC Investor's Edge 78 % See Likes & Dislikes
8 CI Direct Trading 77 % See Likes & Dislikes
9 Desjardins Online Brokerage 74 % See Likes & Dislikes
10 National Bank Direct Brokerage 67 % See Likes & Dislikes
11 HSBC InvestDirect 66 % See Likes & Dislikes
12 Wealthsimple Trade 20 % See Likes & Dislikes

Experience Categories

The Online Brokerage Desktop Experience Review objective criteria is divided into six main categories, each weighted according to industry-defined importance, for an overall maximum score of 100.

Initial Experience - The Pre-Login

The category explores the services available through the pre-login online platform, available to both existing and prospective online investors.

Account Information Experience

Transactional Experience

User Experience

Market Intelligence Experience

Investment & Planning Experience

What we Measure and The Deep Dive that Differentiates.

# of Questions

The questions form the basis for the online analysis and represent the lowest level of features surrounding the main functionality under review. The binary questions are used to replicate the various actions an actual user would perform when using the online platform.

# of Criteria

The second step is the criteria analysis which places groupings of questions together to form the ‘experiences’ or usability encountered by an online user. For example, placing a trade is not simply pressing Buy or Sell buttons. The process involves supporting actions and information.

# of Sub-Categories

The third step places the individual experiences into relevant sub-categories that are grouped according to the general activity performed by an online user. The sub-categories are then assigned weightings according to the importance the group of experiences contributes within its category.

# of Categories

The last step takes the sub-category items under review and rolls them up into the final industry ranking and individual scores. In most cases, the category weightings are defined by the industry firms once the review is complete which then forms the final online scores and rankings.

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