RBC Direct Investing Reviews (2025)

Review:  Lots of wasted time whenever you need to get something done (RESP, TFSA, stock transfers).

Plenty of mistakes on their end.

Ridiculously long wait times to connect with an agent.

Poor communication that only adds to the frustration and wastes even more time.

And yet, they charge premium fees.

I do not recommend them and am in the process of moving my assets elsewhere.

Review:  I’m handling my mom’s estate account, and I have to say the estate agents are completely incompetent. There’s absolutely no communication to let the client know if anything is missing or has been done incorrectly. It has taken me three months and at least six phone calls—each with 40-50 minutes on hold—just to make any progress. It’s as if they’ve never dealt with an estate account before. Total lack of professionalism.

Review:  Terrible response times. Even with their high trading fees, it takes forever to update simple things. Their customer service is inconsistent, and you get different answers depending on who you speak to. The communication system seems completely broken.

Review:  RBC Direct Investing charges excessively high interest rates on margin accounts. Despite the Bank of Canada lowering its interest rate multiple times, RBC hasn’t adjusted theirs. They ignored the 0.25% rate drop in July, the 0.25% drop in September, and the recent 0.50% reduction. RBC’s margin rate remains at 7.25%, while TD Bank’s is at 6.75%.

Review:  I’ve been dealing with RBC Investing while managing my late father’s estate, and it’s been a nightmare. Either they are completely incompetent, or they’re deliberately stalling people from withdrawing funds. RBC consistently gave me instructions on how to withdraw the funds, but every time I followed them, I was told there was an issue with the process and that I needed to start over. After about five attempts, I had to get my lawyer involved. Even now, I’m still waiting, as it takes them weeks to review and respond to any request. I strongly recommend investing with someone else!

Review:  RBC is designed to steal your money. every purchase you make.you are charged $9.95 for a commission then RBC adjust your purchased to take an additional 10% off your purchase. if you purchase does not increased over 10% you’re automatically taking a loss and they don’t care pay close attention when you buy a stock your average cost is higher than your purchase price. If you do the math, you will see it’s adjusted to additional 10% higher. that makes it very difficult to day trade.

Review:  Terrible customer service. Won't allow me to make a beneficiary designation without getting certified true copies.

Review:  In June of this year my account was restricted due to a RBC data entry mistake made back in 2004 when opening my trading account for my spouse. This mistake allowed for a duplicate account to be made which was never maintained or updated for almost 20 years. Because it was linked to my "Joint" account with my spouse, the automated process, for some reason, identified that the W-8BEN form had not been filled in for this account. Their system sent a notice, over 6 months prior, to an address I have not lived at for over 12 years and has changed hands 3 times since we lived there. They did not attempt to call or notify us at our current location, which is on all our active accounts for over 12 years now, and all correspondence has come here with no issue until now.
I actively day trade and had made a huge purchase with the expectation to sell the following business day. I tried to have my sell ready for opening of the market and got a "Your account has been restricted" notice and informed to call for more information. I called and they told me the W-8BEN forms needed to be filled out electronically for my joint account and that the restriction would be lifted by the end of the day. I filled out the form immediately but of course on that day the oil markets collapsed after the highs of the spring. I could not sell at a very vulnerable time. The following morning I tried to cut my losses and sell but I got the same notice. I called again. They said the joint account holder forms had also to be filled in, so I did that and they told me the restrictions would be lifted by the following day. now 2 days of holding a stock while it plummeted. The following day I tried to sell again only to get the same notice. When I phoned, they found that there was this duplicate account created over 20 years ago, that was actually the one with the expired forms. It took another day to sort that out, and by the time I got the account sorted out, the stocks had dropped to the lowest point of the year. Late June 2022! I opened a formal complaint to hopefully ensure this did not happen to anyone else. The person I was dealing with accepted no responsibility on behalf of RBC for the issue. When I asked if it was my fault then? he said no. I asked whose fault is it? There was silence, then he said it's no ones fault. Anyway, this goes on and on and is still going on, now with a formal complaint to OBSI. If you have a major issue with RBC Direct Investing, PLEASE use the formal complaint process and if you don't get satisfaction, move on to the OBSI as this is the only way we can formulate change to an arrogant big goliath who has no care for it's clients as they have no customer care. All they care about is the profits, which will come to bite them if we push back and fight this. This issue cost me tens of thousands and they took no responsibility, even sounded unsympathetic. The biggest thing I would like to see changed is that a human gets involved before putting a restriction on an account. Letter was sent to my old address from a computer! No human intervention at all. BEWARE that if you actively invest with RBC Direct Investing, you are dealing with a computer!

Review:  Call many times for a simple conversion order and they could not do it since they did not have the information. Told me to call back, and each time I called, they gave me inconsistent information and they were not able to get the order done because they did not record or keep up notes of what they said. Mixed matching information and they were willing to use wrong and out dated information to execute your order, so beware. Very irresponsible. One of the guy read the notes while putting me on hold that I could hear "the girl called many times". Hey, if you did not fail to do your job, why should I kept calling back? Do you think I have time to waste for such a bunch of monkey? I asked to speak to the manager, the guy said I could not speak to the manager, RBC's law that he could only have a customer care to contact me. What a lousy, messy, dishonest, dysfunctional working ethic. It's simply just stupid!

Review:  RBC DI customer service and IT infrastructure is worst of all banks. Fat spreads (especially on bonds) are deliberate ways of fleecing because they know retail investors don't have the price transparency. It is common for RBC traders to say '...this is the best price available. If you had USD 1MM or greater, we can try for a better price'. RBC DI contact centre suffers from poor IT infrastructure and culture of lip service. Beware!

Review:  It is costs me thousands in losses over the years. Not worth it. Overall I haven’t made a penny after years of research. RBC couldn’t care less if you lost all your money. As long as they get paid. I have been trying to do a buy for 2 days and it will not process, as it says sorry for inconvenience, technical difficulties. Wonder do they know it is 2021?

Review:  Slow trades and slow to resolve pending trades.
Also, it is very inconsistent. Was able to complete trade when didn't have enough funds due to quick price change, but wasn't able to complete a trade other times, even when I would have been left with barley a negative amount (less than $10). Lost a lot of money because of this. You can't reliably count on it to be consistent.

Review:  Stay away, far away from RBCDI

Review:  I'm a new RBC Direct customer, after opening an account I transferred funds from my RBC cash account it took over a Month, I called twice (3 hr waits) and got two different answers on when my funds would be available, after emailing I got a response that they would re-submit the transfer request and would be done within 5 days, 8 days later it finally appeared. They cost me hundreds of dollars since I had no funds to buy the stocks I wanted, once I could they had risen so much that it was no longer worth it. Do yourself a favour choose another bank.

Review:  Totally disappointed with them. Try to open new account online. No response over three weeks. Ridiculous!!!

Review:  Unbelievable..... Been on hold now for 2 hours and 40 minutes.... Still no answer. Keep being told how valuable of a client I am... Had made repeated atempts to call in last week, basically same thing..... Stayed on before for up to an hour and still no luck. If at least they would tell you how long it would be - if they said 6 hours we could opt out... Hate to hang up if I am a few minutes away.

Review:  i have a gaming laptop specd out laptop doesnt slow down but the trading view is slow as hell. I'm taking all my money out moving it elsewhere.

Review:  I've been waiting 1 hour 45 minutes, still waiting. . . that is unacceptable!

Review:  RBC Direct Investing is a horrible service and an even worse experience. If you're not committed to it now, RUN WAY - FAR AWAY. They've made numerous errors along the way and each time I NEED TO CALL THEM, wait on hold for well over a hour each time, only to move on to their next mistake.
RUN AWAY. STAY AWAY. NEVER COME BACK.

Review:  been trying for 2 days to sell my silver certificates that can only be sold over the phone. no answer for hours. will close my account and take my business elsewhere

Review:  absolutely the worst platform for trading.....up to 12 minutes for a market order!!!!!!...stay away from RBC.....it is useless......

Review:  This is the absolute worst platform I've ever used, and I've used quite a few. I'm in the midst of transferring all my money to another broker. There's outages every morning. Right now for instance, my account won't even appear in when I log in - I can't even trade.

Save your time and your money by staying far away of RBC Direct Investing.

Review:  Got conned into setting up with RBCDI and now they closed electronic buying of the stock I wanted so I am on hold today for 1:33 so far. Was on hold 5+ hours before their system hung up on me, then 4+ hours, and 1.5 so far today. Already missed out on the dip I was waiting for.

Review:  - RBC is one of the worst brokers for trading
- Customer does not exist
- 4+ hours wait times to talk to someone
- Won't even answer your emails.
- Technical Difficulties pretty much every day.
- Outdated Trading Dashboard, Not Intuitive
- The whole web app interface is a joke and buggy.
- Absolutely no way to get hold of them when you need them ASAP.

Review:  Lost thousands because i couldn't sell when i needed to.
No accountability for technical issues.

Review:  They locked up one of my accounts and was unable to sell a very volatile stock when I wished too.
Waiting on the 1 800 # for 2 hours and 21 minutes, never answered.
The following morning started the call at 4 AM PST, answered at 4:25.
Reason the account was locked from on line trading is the the account information had to be updated.
They had NOT advised or sent me the form.
Only way I was allowed to sell the shares was what was offered on opening.
I could not risk looking at the trading pattern as I likely would not be able to access the 1 800 number during trading hours.
I lost between $2000 & $3000 by not been able to sell when I went online two days ago.

Review:  Stay away for RBC Direct Investing. Shitty service. The platform is outdated. If you need to talk to an agent for any reasons, good luck with that ! No chance you can talk to anybody. They don't bother answering the phone. In the meantime, you can lose a lot of money on a stock you can't sell online due to ticker or platform problems.
Every single day, you get the : Due to higher than normal volume of calls ... then maybe, hire more people. Think about it ! Your call is important to us. Ya, sure !

Review:  Clunky and not intuitive at all. Customer service pretty much non existent wait hours on phone. But whats worse is this isn't close to new so there seems to be no will to improve interface with clientele. Go else where nothing can be worse than this.

Review:  I waited for about two hours to speak with someone regarding my investment account and when I got through he could not help and had to patch me to someone else. As he redirected my call he hung up on me, two hours of waiting and nothing. I tried to send an email but the secure email server is not responding either. How %$^% are suppose the get account issues resolved. Very disappointed by their service.

Review:  Several attempted calls to “DUE TO HIGHER THAN NORMAL CALLS YOU CAN EXPECT A LONGER WAIT”. 4 1/2 hours on the phone with outsourced customer lack of support.
Oh we can fix your problem, we will call you back we promise. Yea have been told that twice now. DO NOT I repeat DO NOT TRUST RBC DIRECT. These people are INCOMPETENT!!!!!

Review:  I have an RRSP set up by RBC through DI to their Global Asset Management and wanted to open another account to buy shares.
Impossible to do anything. Not a viable company to deal with.

Review:  Even worse now with covid 19. On hold for hours!!!

Review:  OBG, not even one positive review. ok, I will not use them, thank you all. :)

Review:  this is worse bank I have experience with. I will closed all my account with this fucking shitt bank.charging highest fee with zero service. don't do any business with this bank at all if you don't want your money safe.

Review:  RBC direct investing has constant technical issues. Four days out of five the investors losses money while rbc are "sorry fo inconvenience". This is going on from months now and their technical team is unable to resolve the issue. Same problems everyday from months.

Review:  Please see Cons above

Review:  Loosing thousands! Unable to trade most mornings because the site is busy! Keep getting this message--All server machines are currently busy...


Please retry a few minutes later with your last page

Review:  Big "NO" with their services if you don't want to lose your money. This is the common problem of the Big Bank.

Review:  Site is NOT reliable - constant issues are start of trading day. Interface is about 20 years old. Its like visiting a museum. Impossible to ever get a live agent, unless you have an hour or more to wait online. When you do get someone live, they are nasty people to talk to.

This site will cost you serious money - when you can't access it to complete trades, or trades that don't complete. RBC should stick to managing daily interest savings accounts for grandmothers They are completely incompetent beyond anything else.

Review:  Terrible service. 3 hours + waiting time to speak with representative.Lost T forms for tax. Strong do not recommend to have any business with the RBC DI.

Review:  Customer Service is horrible. Cannot reach anyone in a timely matter using a phone. The customer service people do not appear to know what they are doing.

Review:  Direct Investing sold my stocks without informing me just to cover the quarterly fee of $25.00. Sold at the lowest possible time also. THANKS. Lucky it wasn't a big investment. I wonder if they would have sold them if they were worth millions to cover the $25.00. Disgusting that this is a legal practice. READ THE FINE PRINT WITH THESE GUYS and keep a check to see if you have enough money in you account to cover the annual fees. I will now go and have a little cry.

Review:  i made around 700k in about 1500 trades my first fiscal year with them, i enjoyed their user interface and i like the reports they provide but many other brokers do the same, i've just been with them on the retail side for a long time. they restricted my account without reason and told me in 90 days all would be fine, and then they closed all my retail accounts , around 10, and my di account and told me to hit the road. rbc can seriously fuck off. enjoy the pride parade losers. don't give 2 shits about society and their "clients"

Review:  I bought a structured note from an RBC salesman about 6 years ago. I was charged a 5% commission. Fair enough. He told me I could park the note at RBC or transfer to my existing broker. Next thing I know, they charge me a $100 annual fee, for doing absolutely nothing for me. And then to transfer out of RBC, the fleece me another $125. These so-called "full service" brokers exist for one purpose only-- to milk as much money out of you as possible. These losers deserve to go out of business! I certainly would not buy anything from them again, nor should anyone else!

Review:  Do not keep up on new stock/warrant listings. Must always be phoned in which recreates the same scenery every time a waste of a few hrs on the phone as they try to figure out how to place the order.(the call center cannot do it).
This is one of many time delaying bad service issues. Go anywhere but stay away from this outfit.

Review:  All banks under their Investment accounts - BMO IL, TDI, Scotia's iTrade, CIBC Investor Edge, etc. provide totally free TFSA accounts. No hidden inactivity fees, no balance limits, some of them don't even charge for buying ETFs. The RBC Direct Investing must be the only one that charges a sneaky $25 quarterly fee for balances under $15 K. Why, not greedy enough?

Review:  They are big and callous similar to all RBC entities. 135.00 charge per account to transfer them out when you have had enough. They also do not disclose this when you sign up. Do some research and find a different online vendor.

Review:  Opening the account is long winded and doesn't actually link to RBC online banking, transferring cash from RBC account is not a direct transfer, is manual (during office hours only), trading fees are high, mutual fund MERs are crazy high and returns well below market. why does anyone use RBC?

Review:  Money was given for investment, so another party involved on my bahalf. However, financial advisor did not listen to how wanted money allocated in the Market instead of diversifying, he consolidated roughly half in Energy sector tied to petroluem/oil. back in 2014. I pointed out my concern as oil prices started to fall, but no solid action taken, I guess on the assumption of recovery even though all factors pointed in the wring direction. My Financial Advisor, not taking my interests into account, and my reliance and trust in him, did not pay attention to the continuing downspin and allowed great losses (90% + ) to occur on Breitburn, Seadrill, and Vanguard Natural Resources. I would never recommend RBC services.

Review:  We signed on with RBC (CT branch) as a new company, so employee investment totals in the plan (via payroll deductions) were initially small, including mine. I was reminded by my broker on more than one occasion that he “typically handles a minimum investment of 2 million dollars,” as if he was inconvenienced....despite the fact that he agreed to take us on. He made me feel like a small investor with no clue what I was talking about. I am pushing 60 and have have had substantial sums invested at another firm for years. When I expressed concern about the fact that I lost money (during a strong market run in early 2018), he seemed offended and tried to school me in “taking the long view.” When I asked if he could provide me with a list of other fund options, he refused. When I pushed him, he angrily said “I can’t work like this” and informed he that he would be calling our plan administrator......like I had misbehaved. We have since moved the company plan elsewhere.

Review:  At the branch I was told that it would take 2 weeks to move my 2 funds from RBC Dominion to RBC Direct. Here I sit 79 days later, [ on hold now for 31 minutes]. I have made several inquiries in 9 weeks and have had 4 assurances that the problems have been fixed. One of the accounts has been moved since this morning but the other is somewhere in make believe land. Signed up on Oct 30, 2018 and today is Jan 8, 2019. UPDATE.. I just got off the phone and she said the team just got the orders today. I'm beginning to believe I am the stupid one here for not pulling out several days ago.

Review:  In constant need of maintenance.
Dec 27 and results of previous day still not posted in the accounts.
Unable to trade, loosing money again.
Award winning claim is false advertising , go elsewhere.
Situation and performance getting worst in all banking and investing at RBC.
MB

Review:  Unfortunately, I have no other option but to give them one star ( I would give them zero stars) ! Stay away from them ! You constantly will lose money, and you will receive only justifications (if). In the past, I already had a very bad experience with them, constantly losing money. After changing the RBC institution many years ago, my investments were always on positive performance. Presently, my company changed the financing group, choosing RBC to manage the employees investments. I have no choice, but to be back in business with RBC for almost one year! - what a financial constant disaster !!! Worst performance: at least 1% lost every month; no apologies, no explanations, no justifications, zero transparency. Check the reviews of other brokers, compares, inform you well, and use your own judgement before selecting the institution to take care of your investments.

Review:  I gave specific instructions as to when to move funds from another brokerage, but they ignored my request and moved the funds immediately. I then instructed them to stop, but they continue to move funds from my other brokerage account.

I am terminating my relationship with them.

Review:  A question for Steward Home and Shaun. Can you tell me please which specially which RBC you dealt with- what city- Thank you.

Review:  1) Worst Bank manager who had bad hand writing and costed me money and I had to go to Chinatown branch 3 times to fix his hand writing problem, because Direct Investment won't take the application unless corrected by the bank agent.
2) Direct Investor's front office is really Royal bank, who doesn't know much about DI, and customers are forced to deal with RBC staff who know little or none at all about Direct Investment.
3) Any problem with DI, I had to take it to Royal Bank, who said it's not there problem but DI's problems.
4) Di says they can't fix the problem so I must deal with Royal bank branch instead because DI has no office !
5) repeat above step 3 and 4 a few times and dozens of phone calls and bank managers' lousy handwriting who wrote a 7 and 1 and 5 and 6 look similar !! WTF !!
6) Nobody from either RBC or DI apologized for their incompetence !
7) TAKE your business ELSEWHERE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Review:  Keep charging quarterly fee to my portfolio despite the fact that I kept minimum amount in my account as was told by agent to avoid the fee. No one return calls or pickup calls or reply to emails as they dont care about customers

Review:  I gave them $300,000 in the hopes that I would make 5% a year what happened was I lost $18,000 plus over $6,000 in fees to them plus from the time I called to close the account until I eventually got my check I lost another $5,000 all in all over $29,000 lost in 8 months that's more than one full year of my retirement budget gone

Review:  I have accounts at several brokerages-each brokerage has its own unique advantages. I have had mostly terrible experiences with RBC in the last few years. After over a dozen years, I finally closed my account. My advice is to use brokerages with good reviews.

Review:  RBCDI Royal Circle claims to offer Thomson Reuters IBES consensus earnings estimates. I notified them over a month ago that the annual estimate is showing the quarterly numbers. They admit they have a problem with their website but they still say they are working on it - over a month later!

Review:  I had an account with them for 4 years, and I regret I opened it in the first place. They are super outdated, not convinient to use, they run the business like in 1980s. They had frozen my acc. quietly because a form was missing and when I decided to close the account it is already took 3 calls (an hour each) and account HAS NOT BEEN CLOSED YET. I'm disgussed. Now I think of moving all my funds from RBC bank as well because they are to fat and lazy to provide the service the customer paid for. Shame, shame, shame.

Review:  horrible charts 30 -20 mins delay just getting current quotes are useless .

Review:  RBC is worthless and pathetic. Their only strategy is to mindlessly churn your account based on analysis a 7th grader could could pull off of CNBC. Your portfolio will lose value and the fees will kill you. And they will laugh all the way to the 18th green. If you want to lose money, they’re perfect!

Review:  Set a meeting with RBC "specialist" to set up account. She had to phone in to the main line to get help to "make sure everythings done right". Was told 3-6 days. Called a week later, no paperwork has been received - was told to call direct investing directly as the " specialist " was going on vacation. Called direct to find out she didnt fill papers out correctly. Had to resend and wait ANOTHER week. Called and told a different story about a different section that wasnt done properly but they never mentioned that previously. 3 weeks of this back and forth and i had enough. I cancelled my account and currently pulling all my buisness out of RBC. NO ONE KNOWS WHAT IS GOING ON IN RBC. Constant run around!!!

Review:  When you want to withdraw money. They hide behind paper and borderline abuse the elderly with paperwork.

Trying to close an account they say they need to update everything and send you all sorts of redundent paperwork with information they already have. They ask for a new w-9 form (like they do not have the SSN of the person) and ask for adoption agreements for accounts that are already adopted and exist.

Moron to the left, fools to the right. They just suck!!!

Review:  CANT EVEN TRADE ON HOLIDAYS WHEN THE U.S IS NOT COMPLETE GARBAGE. LOGS YOU OUT WHEN YOUR WORKING ON YOUR PROFILE ITS ANNOYING!! THE CRAPPIEST PLATFORM IN THE WORLD VERY LIMITED TO WHATS OUT THERE.

Review:  I had the displeasure of being stuck w/ these clowns and their WM advisor for years until I saw the day of light. They simply do not do any active management. My one account laggard for seven years and all I did was pay fees (it was in mutual funds). I made zero dollars believe it or not (due to fees I paid them). My other account w/ 1m+ finally was put in equity but the portfolio is simply comprised of various equity that are given to him by their analyst. There is zero active management and no self-service capabilities. For first account, it cost me to get the money out WTF!
Horrible.

Review:  Worst of the worst. Incompetent morons, do not invest any money with these scam artists.
Interactive brokers is a professional brokerage 100% better than RBC Direct investing.
You are guaranteed to lose money with RBC.

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