Can I Invest on Behalf of Someone under 18?

Yes. To do this, you need to sign up on the portal as yourself and complete the application including the 3rd party determination which is in the last section. In the 3rd party determination section you will provide the information for the person that you are investing on behalf of, including the details of your relationship with them. 

Once you have completed the application and have been approved by our compliance team, your account name on the portal will be changed by us to: “Your Name”-“in Trust for”-“the Name of the Person that you are Investing on Behalf of”. If you want to invest on behalf of multiple people you will need to create an account for each of them. 

Are there any restrictions on whom I can Invest for?

There are no restrictions on the type of relationship that you can have with the person you are investing on behalf of. It could be a family member or a friend and they can be any age. With this being said, you must understand that you are making decisions to benefit someone else. All the assets in the account belong to the other individual, and you need to make decisions accordingly. Please note this process through Equivesto is for the creation of an informal trust account. This is not the creation of a legal trust entity. Equivesto is not responsible for the tax implications of this account and subsequent investments made via this account, so please speak to an accounting professional if you have questions.

Are there any Tax Filings required?

You may need to file a T3 - Trust Income Tax and Information Return annually with the CRA based on the new trust reporting rules (2023) in Canada. Please speak to a tax professional about your specific situation.

Creating a New Username at Equivesto for In-Trust Accounts - Email Alias Solution

If you already have a personal account at Equivesto, the email used to signup the new account must be unique from yours. To quickly make an email alias for your in-trust account, you can use the same address you currently use adding a + to the address before the @. For example youremail+kid1@example.com will redirect emails to youremail@example.com. For people making in-trust accounts on Equivesto, this can be an easy way for you to create new usernames without needing to sign up for a new email account with Google, Microsoft, or other email provider. We recommend you to test out the email alias first before attempting to use it on Equivesto.