BMO Just Broke the Big Five's Commission Wall — and the Fee You Still Pay Is the One Nobody Mentions

On September 9, BMO announced that BMO InvestorLine will charge $0 commission on all stock and ETF trades starting September 14, 2026. It is the first direct investing arm of a Big Five Canadian bank to do it.

For anyone who has spent years paying $9.95 a trade at a bank brokerage because that is where their chequing account was, this is a genuinely good day.

It is also worth understanding exactly what changed, because the headline is doing a lot of work.

What actually changes on September 14

• Stock and ETF commissions: $0. Unlimited, on self-directed accounts.
• Options commissions: $0, with the per-contract fee dropping to $0.90 from $1.25.
• Assignment and exercise fees on options contracts: removed.
• Brokerage account administration fees: eliminated.
• No action required — existing BMO InvestorLine Self-Directed clients are moved to the new pricing automatically.

What is excluded: adviceDirect accounts, which run on an advisory fee model instead and are not eligible for options trading. And in BMO's own words, "account fees, foreign exchange fees and other fees and charges continue to apply."

That last sentence is where the real money is.

The fee that survived, and why it is bigger than the one that died

Consider a Canadian who invests $2,000 a month, half of it into a US-listed ETF, and rebalances a couple of times a year. Under the old $9.95 pricing, commissions might have cost roughly $250 to $300 a year. Real money, now gone.

Now consider the currency conversion. Buying a US-listed security from a Canadian-dollar account requires converting CAD to USD, and Canadian brokerages typically charge for that as a spread built into the exchange rate — commonly in the range of 1% to 2%, depending on the broker and the size of the trade. Convert $12,000 a year at 1.5% and you have paid roughly $180 in a fee that never appears as a line on your statement. Do it for twenty years while the balance grows, and the total dwarfs what you ever paid in commissions.

This is not a criticism specific to BMO — it is how the Canadian retail brokerage industry has priced FX for a long time. It is simply the cost that becomes the main event once commissions are gone.

Two practical responses. First, hold a US-dollar account wherever your broker offers one, so you convert once instead of on every trade. Second, learn Norbert's gambit, the technique of buying a dual-listed ETF in one currency and journalling it into the other to convert at close to the market rate. Neither is exotic, and both matter far more to a long-term Canadian investor in 2026 than a $9.95 commission ever did.

The competitive picture this lands in

BMO is not first in Canada — it is first among the big banks. National Bank Direct Brokerage went to zero commissions on Canadian and US stocks and ETFs in 2021. Wealthsimple and Questrade already trade stocks and ETFs commission-free. Robinhood entered Canada in June 2026 through its acquisition of WunderFi.

What BMO adds is distribution. Millions of Canadians hold their day-to-day banking at a Big Five institution and have never opened a brokerage account anywhere else, largely out of inertia. Removing the commission removes the most visible reason not to start.

Whether RBC, TD, Scotiabank and CIBC follow is the open question. CIBC Investor's Edge already offers $0 trades to clients under 25 on a qualifying banking plan, which suggests the industry is testing where the pressure is. It would be surprising if the other four sat still.

The caveat worth taking seriously

Claire Célérier, a finance researcher at the University of Toronto, made a point in coverage of the announcement that deserves more attention than it usually gets: lowering the cost of access also lowers the cost of trading badly. Platforms competing on zero commissions have tended to expand into leveraged products and options, where retail investors lose money most of the time.

That is not an argument against the change. Cheaper index investing is straightforwardly better for Canadians. It is an argument for noticing that the fee you were paying was never the main thing standing between you and good returns. Behaviour was. A $0 commission makes buying an ETF every month cheaper, and it makes day trading options cheaper by exactly the same amount.

Use the first one.

What to do this week

If you are an existing InvestorLine client: nothing. The pricing applies automatically.

If you have been overpaying at another bank brokerage: this is a reasonable moment to compare, and a transfer of a TFSA or RRSP between institutions can be done in kind without triggering tax or losing contribution room — though the losing institution usually charges a transfer-out fee, and the receiving one often reimburses it if you ask.

If you have been putting off starting because trading felt expensive: that excuse just expired at four of the five largest banks' main competitors, and now at one of the five itself.

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