The Canadian online brokerage market, although younger and smaller than its US counterpart, is showing the same signs of expansion and an overall rise in adoption rates. Canadas online investment community, somewhat buffeted by recent market volatility, still continues to grow in terms of accounts and assets. Many of these firms reported much greater than expected growth in 2000 and are preparing for continued growth in 2001. These are some of the findings of a new report on the Canadian online brokerage market just released by Celent.

Additionally, the rise of the mainstream investor segment in Canada provides increased opportunity for those firms willing and able to evolve their service to offer more robust research, analytical tools and advice. The full service firms, now just making a foray into the online market, will find themselves in position to attract large numbers of these mainstream investors.

According to Fritz McCormick of Celent, Discount firms will fight to keep their existing accounts and will also have to strive to evolve and meet the needs of the increasingly savvy Canadian retail investment community. Those firms without the ability or willingness to add new products and services will quickly fall prey to their competition, and some degree of consolidation is very likely in the next year.

The online brokerage offerings analyzed in this report include:

A Table of Contents is available online.

of Celent Communication's Retail Securities & Investments research service can download the report electronically by clicking on the icon to the left.