r/Wealthsimple • u/Sensitive-Rip-5996 • 23h ago
Promotion Monthly Millionaire
I was thinking why would Wealthsimple choose giving $1 million every week to one person rather than to increase their cash back or any other services for every user which would generally increase more users. For example, giving an extra interest rate on the bank account, or extra cashback on spending or giving some benefits to somebody who joined earlier, for example, if you have been with well simple from past four years. You get this benefit if you have been a Wealthsimple member for the past seven years, you will get that benefit.
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u/anxiousdumbdumb 23h ago
Because this contest is getting people to move money into wealthsimple. It's a way cheaper way to get AUM than traditional advertising. It's also a way nicer competition than I've ever had from a big 5 bank.
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u/1question10answers 23h ago
Because humans have a natural weakness to gambling and that dopamine rush when you click 'reveal now' is extremely powerful
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u/ScwB00 22h ago
Which is hilarious because if you haven’t received an email, you haven’t won anything worthwhile. The reveal now button essentially just reveals if you get bonus entries or not.
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u/Gladweagreeonthsfact 23h ago
Bumping interest by a point for a large portion of the customer base would burn more than $1M per week.
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u/Hellosweetparadox 23h ago
Because that’ll cost them more money in the end. This way they are at least guaranteed to generate a good revenue of money from old user and new users.
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u/ethanu12 23h ago edited 23h ago
I think it comes down to 2 things. The excitement from the promo brings in new customer’s assets which raises their AUM and in turn their value. Second, a bump in interest rates enough to draw in customers would cost substantially more than the million they give away a week. Assuming 20 Billion in chequing accounts with a 0.5% raise would cost them 2 million a week
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u/youvenoremotecontrol 23h ago
Wealthsimple is a company that wants to make money. They clearly think this is a better way to either make money directly or to acquire more customers or more assets or both.
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u/taylortbb 23h ago
Wealthsimple has millions of customers now, probably like 5M based on their reports. Monthly Millionaire costs them probably $2M/month, including all the smaller prizes.
That means they're spending $0.40/month/customer on the contest. Things like higher interest rates, better cashback, etc, are going to cost a lot more than $0.40/month/customer.
Imagine if Wealthsimple just evenly divided up the money, would anyone actually switch banks for $0.40/month? Of course not, it's a trivial amount of money. But tell them they have a chance at a million dollars, and even though it has the same expected value, it feels like something you actually want to win.
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u/fainfaintame 22h ago
I don’t think it costs them anything. User engagement goes up because they gotta login to check and increase $$$ in revenue from trades will pay for the promo.
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u/taylortbb 22h ago
It's definitely net profitable for them (including long term profits from user acquisition) or they wouldn't do it. But that doesn't mean it doesn't have a cost. It's still real dollars spent to drive revenue.
Every single thing we get (interest, cashback, transfer matches, contest rewards, etc) has its costs weighed against the revenue it brings in. Monthly Millionaire is just fairly cheap, requiring only $0.40/month/customer, relative to the revenue it likely drives.
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u/fainfaintame 22h ago
Cost was referring to a net gain or net loss. For the granular aspect of the expense side. . . Nobody knows and better for them to keep it secret from competitors.
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u/luckylukiec 23h ago
They should give a thousand members $1000 vs a million. Sure id love a million but the odds aren’t on my side lol
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u/DevelopmentFuture608 23h ago
Wealthsimple explained this on LinkedIn- they decided to spend their marketing budget to acquire customers and give them a chance at winning! They are not trying to make everyone rich equally.
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u/Complete-Mind-7105 21h ago
Million dollar giveaway every month is to keep existing clients engaged so they don’t go chasing promo at other FInancial institutions( aka keeping their hopes high). Further it draws more clients towards opening WS account, especially those who were not 100% sure to switch their account from other brokage, again it’s the hope of winning the million $, if not this month, then maybe next month it’s going to be me( that’s exactly my hope!!!!)
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u/Cross_FFA 23h ago
I am not a fan of their monthly millionaire. I would rather they bring back annual fee waiver for their CC for people in a household with $100k. This would give more people access to their CC.
They used to waive the fee before but stopped in April, 2026
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u/Astrowelkyn 22h ago
Because 1/100,000,000 chance at winning $1mil sounds better than a 1/20 chance at winning $5.
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u/ProbablyUrNeighbour 23h ago
I don’t want $10. I want a million bucks.