Financial services firm Wealthsimple is turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to help Canadians take greater control of their finances, launching a new AI-powered assistant designed to offer personalized financial insights and help clients manage their money.

Called Penny and launched by the financial services firm during an event on Nov. 5, the AI agent will be available for all Wealthsimple clients through its app.

“Penny is an AI assistant that lives entirely within the Wealthsimple ecosystem. A lot of the power of AI assistants is their ability to garner insights across your information and then enable you to take action from those insights,” Jordan Deutsch, director of software development with Toronto-based Wealthsimple, told TechNX in an interview.

The new tool is designed to help clients maximize RRSP contributions, track spending habits, identify potential savings and set up recurring payments, she said.

Tool to ease financial stress

By deploying Penny, Wealthsimple hopes to ease anxieties that many Canadians are facing when it comes to finances.

Wealthsimple recently commissioned an Angus Reid survey of more than 1,600 Canadians to examine how people are feeling about the economy and their personal finances.

“People are already really feeling the squeeze from the cost of living, rent and groceries. And when the essentials take up so much of a paycheque, there’s very little left over to plan with, let alone feel in control of,” Vriti Panwar, financial advisor at Wealthsimple told TechNX in an email exchange.

One of the survey's key findings was that many Canadians feel adrift when it comes to managing their finances, she said.

“Thirty-nine per cent of Canadians say they have less control over their money than a year ago, rising to 46 per cent of millennials, which tells us that people are losing control of their finances.”

While Canadians are feeling “overwhelmed” when thinking of their financial situation, Wealthsimple’s new tool Penny is not something that forces itself upon users, according to Deutsch.

“Penny will only start working when you start engaging with it. There’s a little chat bubble. I can open it up. I can start talking to Penny; ask questions, ask Penny to help me start taking action.”

Uncovering insights for clients

Once clients begin interacting with Penny, the agent works "behind the scenes," she explained.

“Once you start working with Penny, proactively surfacing activities that might be relevant to you, helping you by pushing insights that you had conversed about in the past, but what’s really critical is Penny is very much opt-in.”

“If I don’t engage with Penny, Penny’s off; not working. It’s once you start engaging, and once you start conversing in that dedicated space that you’re actually engaging with Penny,” Deutsch said.

For those worried that the tool will execute financial decisions on its own, that is not the case.

“Penny, nor any of the third-party AI platforms that you can connect through secure connections, have the ability to execute actions. I think that’s a key and very critical component of our technical design,” she said.

As an example, when a customer wants to do something simple as an e-transfer, through its “conversational interface,” instructions are given to the tool.

“Penny can prepare an e-transfer. It can help me pick the right contact. Can help me if I do voice-to-text, it translates the amount that I want, which account I want it from. But actually sending that e-transfer is an action that I take and confirm within the app, and I’ll do that consent there.”

Greater integration with third-party AI

Wealthsimple also plans to expand its integration with third-party AI platforms, such as ChatGPT or Claude, in 2027.

Those guardrails will also be in place for the external integrations, according to Deutsch.

“What’s really critical for us is we don’t want to expose the ability to complete an action to an AI agent. It’s the ability to draft the action, which we really think is where you get the power of that friction reduction.”

“Our objective with something like Penny, doing it directly in our product, is to layer in that security and safety that we want for all of our clients. Keeping all of the data within our ecosystem under the same controls that you would have when you log into Wealthsimple.”

With the name Penny, the company is hoping to acknowledge a lost part of Canada’s past, Deutsch said.

“We missed the penny. I think that as Canadians, it’s something that was a beautiful signifier of our history, and it’s something that we wanted to bring back.”

Wealthsimple holds approximately $155 billion in assets under administration for more than four million Canadians as of June 30. It was founded in 2014.