Opening a Registered Disability Savings Plan (RDSP) account It is a common frustration for many disabled Canadians. After doing their due diligence to educate themselves of the benefits of the RDSP, they walk into their financial institution only to be met by inexperience and misinformation from staff who lack knowledge of how these accounts actually work.
Lack of popularity
While the RDSP is one of the most powerful wealth building tools in Canada, it is considered a niche product given its lack of popularity and low utilization rate. Based on recent data, RDSP has disproportionately low adoption rates compared to other registered accounts such as the Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) or Tax Free Savings Account (TFSA). As of 2023 there are only 282,210 RDSP accounts open compared the to the TFSA that has an estimated 28.2 million. Almost every Canadian adult is a potential candidate to open an RRSP or TFSA, while only 1.7 million out of approximately 41 million Canadians have been approved for the Disability Tax Credit as of 2024 (source) which is a necessary requirement to opening an RDSP. In other words, only about 4% of Canadians are eligible to open an RDSP, and because volume is low, a typical bank employee may only open one RDSP a year, if at all.
Administration costs
RRSPs and TFSAs have very straightforward rules for the bank. In contrast, RDSPs are integrated with the federal government and require the issuer to communicate with Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) each month to request grants and bonds for clients. Secondly, banks that maintain RDSP accounts must understand contribution rules and limits, grant and bond payment rules, proportional repayment rules, track Assistance Holdback Amounts, and most importantly train their staff to understand these guidelines so they can appropriately advise clients when making transactions.
Because of the technical requirements and overhead costs, majority of discount brokerages such as Wealthsimple, Questrade and Webull do not offer RDSPs.
Canadians and disability – the economic gap
While the bank may sell the same mutual funds inside any registered accounts, there is a lack of incentive for bank management to invest and properly train employees and develop solutions for RDSP clientele. Profitability per client is a key metric that dictates where a bank spends their budget on staff training and product development. Because Canadians with disabilities are statistically more likely to live in poverty and/or earn lower wages, they are often viewed as low value customers by financial institutions, which directly contributes to the lack of RDSP expertise at the branch level.
The poverty gap – confirmed
There is a substantial divide in financial resources between disabled and non-disabled Canadians. According to 2024/2025 Statistics Canada data, employees with disabilities earn an average of $2.22 less per hour than those without disabilities. Working age Canadians between the ages of 25 and 64 with severe disabilities have a median after tax income of approximately $30,590, compared to $46,080 for those without disabilities. Moreover, approximately 46.4% of people with disabilities are employed, compared to 66.2% of those without disabilities (source). The 2025 Disability Poverty Report Card highlights that it costs a person with a disability roughly 30% more just to reach the same standard of living as a non-disabled person due to medical and accessibility costs.
Economic disincentive
Mutual funds at the bank typically have percentage based fees built into these products, also know as the Management Expense Ratio or MER. The higher the account balance, the more revenue the bank will generate. Processing a small RDSP account often requires hours of tedious paperwork the bank must pay an employee to do, offering the bank a negligible return. In contrast, transactions in a much larger RRSP or TFSA account can be completed in fractions of the time through automated systems, yielding a much higher return for the financial institution. For a profit driven company, the RDSP account is often viewed as a high effort, low reward product.
Lack of awareness of the RDSP
The 2025 Federal Evaluation of the Canada Disability Savings Program notes that finding knowledgeable financial institutions remains a challenge and that promotion of the RDSP by financial institutions is primarily passive. Because the financial system is currently disincentivized to support the RDSP, the burden of advocacy has shifted to the non profit sector. Organizations such as The Plan Institute and Disability Alliance BC offer webinars to bridge the knowledge gap and educate beneficiaries and their caregivers the with the necessary tools to navigate government programs such as the RDSP and Disability tax credit (DTC).