Is Simplii Safe? Why It Shares CIBC's $100,000 Limit

If you’re asking whether Simplii is safe before you move money there, the answer is yes, and the reason is more straightforward than it is for most online banks. There’s no young company here with a partner bank standing behind it. Simplii is CIBC, trading under a different name, and your balance sits on the same books as any CIBC customer’s.

That single fact answers most of the question. It also creates the one thing worth checking, which is that CIBC and Simplii aren’t two banks when it comes to deposit insurance, and plenty of people assume they are.

Is Simplii Financial a bank?

Yes, though not a bank of its own. Simplii Financial is a trade name and operating division of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. CIBC puts it in a footnote on its CDIC deposit insurance disclosure (opens in a new tab): “Simplii Financial” is a trademark and division of CIBC. Simplii’s own legal terms (opens in a new tab) describe your accounts as products “provided by the direct banking division of CIBC.”

The brand is newer than the accounts

CIBC announced Simplii on August 16, 2017 (opens in a new tab) and switched the name over on November 1 that year, taking over the banking products that had until then carried the President’s Choice Financial brand. CIBC had been, in its own words, “the bank behind the President’s Choice Financial consumer banking offer for nearly 20 years.” So for most of those customers, nothing moved and no account changed institution. The name on the card changed.

The bank underneath is considerably older. CIBC’s quick facts (opens in a new tab) put its founding at 1867, with 15 million clients, 50,000 employees and $1,117 billion in total assets, listed on the TSX and NYSE under CM.

Where does your money actually sit?

At CIBC, on CIBC’s own balance sheet. There’s no partner institution in the middle and no trust arrangement holding your balance on someone else’s behalf, because a division isn’t a separate legal entity. Open CDIC’s list of member institutions (opens in a new tab) and you’ll find Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce as the member, with CIBC, Renaissance, Simplii Financial and Wood Gundy indented beneath it as its trade names.

Eligible deposits are covered to $100,000 per insured category, principal and interest included. CIBC’s disclosure lists the Simplii products that qualify: the No Fee Chequing Account, the High Interest Savings Account, GICs, the TFSA, the RRSP savings accounts and the RRSP GIC. The foreign currency savings accounts count too, in US dollars, euros, pounds, Indian rupees, Philippine pesos and Chinese yuan, since CDIC’s eligibility rules (opens in a new tab) cover deposits in Canadian or foreign currency alike.

CIBC and Simplii count as one bank for coverage

CIBC states it directly on its deposit insurance page (opens in a new tab): “The maximum insurance coverage for eligible deposits held at CIBC includes Simplii Financial eligible deposits.”

One limit, not two. That matters more here than it would at most banks, because CIBC is a bank a great many Canadians already use, and Simplii inherited a large book of everyday accounts from President’s Choice Financial. Someone who keeps a chequing account at CIBC and pushes their savings to Simplii for the better rate hasn’t spread that money across two institutions. All of it is at CIBC, counted together.

What does get counted separately

Coverage is applied per category, and there are nine of them, so one bank can insure a good deal more than $100,000 for you. Deposits held in one name, joint deposits, a TFSA, an FHSA, an RRSP, an RRIF, an RESP, an RDSP and deposits held in trust each get their own $100,000. A Simplii High Interest Savings Account and a Simplii TFSA don’t collide. We walked through how the categories work in our guide to CDIC deposit insurance in Canada.

What happens if Simplii fails?

Simplii can’t fail on its own, because there’s no separate company to fail. The real question is what happens if CIBC does, and that’s a shorter conversation than the same question about a fintech, because CIBC is one of the six banks the federal regulator watches most closely.

OSFI designates six domestic systemically important banks: RBC, TD, BMO, Scotiabank, CIBC and National Bank. The designation carries obligations (opens in a new tab), including a capital surcharge equal to 1% of risk-weighted assets, total loss-absorbing capacity requirements, enhanced resolvability expectations with recovery and resolution plans on file, and what OSFI calls greater supervisory intensity and disclosure requirements.

If it ever did come to a failure, CDIC pays depositors of a failed member institution directly. You wouldn’t file a claim against CIBC or wait on an administrator to unwind a trust, which is the slower path a customer of a non-bank fintech would be on.

Who regulates Simplii?

The same bodies that regulate CIBC, since they’re the same institution. Four of them matter to you as a customer, and each keeps a public record.

• OSFI supervises all banks operating in Canada (opens in a new tab), around 350 federally regulated financial institutions in all, checking that they hold enough capital to absorb losses and run sound governance and risk management.
• CDIC insures the deposits. Three CIBC entities are members: CIBC itself, CIBC Mortgages Inc. and CIBC Trust Corporation.
• FCAC (opens in a new tab) handles the consumer side, supervising the disclosure rules, complaint-handling obligations and codes of conduct that federally regulated banks are bound by.
• OBSI is the free, independent step after Simplii’s own complaint process. Since November 1, 2024 (opens in a new tab) it has been the single external complaints body for every federally regulated bank in Canada, replacing a patchwork that used to differ from bank to bank.

What Simplii does well, and what to watch

The strongest thing about Simplii’s safety picture is that there’s very little to work out. Most online banking brands in Canada require you to trace a chain of partner institutions before you know who holds the money. Here the chain is one link long. You also get a bank-sized fraud posture behind a no-fee account: Simplii’s Online Security Guarantee (opens in a new tab) commits to reimbursing “100% of any funds removed without authorization from your affected bank account,” and CIBC’s ATM network is open to Simplii customers across the country.

Simplii has three quirks. None of them changes the answer above.

• It isn’t sold in Quebec. CIBC’s disclosure states that Simplii Financial banking services aren’t available there.
• The shared limit is easy to trip over. It only matters above $100,000 in one category across both names, and it catches exactly the person who thought they were being careful.
• The 2018 breach is on the record. About 40,000 clients, disclosed the next day, money returned, settled in court. The full account is below.

The May 2018 data breach

On May 28, 2018, Simplii told clients (opens in a new tab) it had received a claim the previous day that fraudsters may have electronically accessed personal and account information for roughly 40,000 clients. It added online security measures, contacted affected clients, and committed in the same release: “If a client is a victim of fraud because of this issue, we will return 100% of the money lost from the affected bank account.”

The legal outcome is public. A class action covering Simplii clients notified of the breach settled for $1,769,425 (opens in a new tab). The Ontario Superior Court of Justice approved it on April 20, 2021 (opens in a new tab), and the Simplii payments were distributed by direct deposit that December. No comparable breach at Simplii has been reported in the eight years since.

If you’re weighing Simplii against other Canadian options rather than deciding whether to trust it, we lined up the field in Simplii alternatives in Canada.

What Lodavo adds to the account you already have

Lodavo publishes this site and makes a prize-linked savings app. We don’t hold deposits, and Simplii doesn’t pay for placement here.

That first part matters, because this whole page has been about who holds your money. Lodavo rewards you for saving in the savings or chequing account you already have: the more you keep set aside, the more free tickets you collect in a weekly draw, with at least $100 going to a user every week and prizes reaching $10,000. The CDIC coverage described above carries on exactly as it is. If you want Lodavo checked the same way, we wrote an honest look at whether Lodavo is safe and legit, and the technical detail sits on our security page.

So, is Simplii safe?

Yes, on evidence anyone can look up in a few minutes. It’s a division of a bank founded in 1867, supervised by OSFI with the extra requirements reserved for systemically important institutions, insured by CDIC, backed by a published reimbursement guarantee, and carrying one documented breach that was disclosed within a day and paid for in full.

So the useful task is arithmetic rather than trust. Add up what you hold under the CIBC name and the Simplii name together, category by category, and check that no single category has crossed $100,000. If none has, you’re covered, and you can stop thinking about it.

Terms and conditions apply. No purchase necessary (alternate method of entry available). Skill-testing question required. Open to legal residents of Canada who are the age of majority. Odds depend on the number of eligible entries received. Full rules and odds at our contest rules.