This Week in Canadian Money: A prize-linked savings app was launched
Plus: My first-ever interview, BMO sold a business, and Wealthsimple is probably in the room.
Hey, welcome back.
Here are 3 things that caught my eye this week in Canadian money (including a first for this newsletter - an interview!):
1. BMO sold its transportation and vendor finance businesses
The transportation finance business → financing for trucks and trailers.
The vendor finance business → financing for equipment.
The combined portfolio of these is approx. $14.5B.
BMO sold to Stonepeak, an investment firm that specializes in infrastructure and real assets.
Humour me:
In finance, the word “vehicle” can be used for tools or mechanisms or types of investments. So in this case, instead of saying…
“Stonepeak bought a vehicle finance business”
… it wouldn’t be so far off to say:
“Stonepeak bought a vehicle finance vehicle.”
And assuming Stonepeak financed the deal, we could potentially say:
“Stonepeak financed a vehicle finance vehicle.”
And to go even further (I did say to humour me!), if they financed it with some financing mechanism or, vehicle, of sorts, we could say:
“Stonepeak used a finance vehicle to finance a vehicle finance vehicle.”
… I’m dizzy 😵💫. I think I need to lie down…
2. Wealthsimple announced it ended Q1 with $125B in assets and 4M+ users
I briefly mentioned this last week but I want to go deeper here because
These are big numbers, and
I think it’s interesting to put them in terms that are easy to relate to and picture.
Starting with number of users:
Users
What does 4M+ users look like in terms of the population?
(a) All Canadians
Canada has a population of ~41.5M people.
4M out of 41.5M is 9.6%, and for easy math let’s round to 10%.
That means 1 in 10 Canadians is a Wealthsimple user. Illustrated in emoji circles:
🟢 ⚪️ ⚪️ ⚪️ ⚪️ ⚪️ ⚪️ ⚪️ ⚪️ ⚪️
(b) 18-40 year olds
Narrowing in on adults under 40, the company reported that “one in five Canadians aged 18 to 40 uses at least one Wealthsimple product” (emphasis my own). That would look like this:
🟢 ⚪️ ⚪️ ⚪️ ⚪️
So if you’re 18-40 and in an elevator with four other 18-40 year olds, there’s a high chance that one of you is with Wealthsimple. And if you’re in a room of around 10 people, regardless of age, chances are decent that one of you is also with the company.
Assets
The company said the $125B figure (really $124.8B) is up 12.1% since last quarter.
Doing some back-of-the-napkin math:
$125B being up 12% would mean that last quarter they had around $112B.
↳ Approx. a $13B increase.Let’s assume the quarter is a clean 90 days.
This means that Wealthsimple’s assets increased by $13B in 90 days, for an average of roughly $144M per day.
That’s $6M/hour (similar to my hourly rate btw)!
Or $100K/minute.
Can you imagine assets increasing by $100K every minute? Since reading this email, it would have grown by a few hundred thousand.
The bottom line
Wealthsimple’s growth is high and impressive, especially for a fintech that’s a little over a decade into its existence.
But, it’s still worth pointing out that these numbers are much smaller than some other financial institutions. For the really wild numbers, it would be better to look at the massive asset managers.
At $500B, $1T in AUM, even a small percentage increase over a quarter would translate into a huge average daily increase.
Also, those firms’ customer bases generally cover a higher share of the population. A big bank for example might have 10M customers in Canada. That’s around a quarter of Canadians:
🟢 ⚪️ ⚪️ ⚪️
3. Lodavo launched recently
This was new to me. Here’s the gist of it:
Lodavo is a prize-linked savings app
Prize-linked savings, or PLS (not Pumpkin Latte Spiced like I first thought) combines saving with rewards.
PLS is offered elsewhere, including the UK and US.
Was started by Concordia and McGill students and launched a couple of weeks ago.
How it works:
(a) You link your bank account with Lodavo (they use Plaid and it’s read-only, so Lodavo doesn’t actually touch your money).
(b) For every $25 you have deposited in your connected account, you get a ticket.
(c) Similar to a lottery ticket, you select seven numbers per ticket.
(d) Every week, seven numbers are drawn for two prizes: one for a $10K jackpot and another for a $100 prize
$10K jackpot: you win if you match 7/7 numbers
$100 prize: you win if you have the most numbers matching across all users
I wanted to learn more, so I asked co-founder and CEO Benjamin Thomas about the concept, stats, potential plans for the future, and more.
Here’s our Q&A:
Q&A with Benjamin Thomas, Co-founder and CEO of Lodavo:
On stats
Jared: Congrats on launching Lodavo. Can you share some stats - how many users do you have and how much money have they saved so far?
Benjamin: We launched April 30th, 2026, so two weeks ago. So far we have 500 signups across 11 of the 13 provinces and territories, with $750,000+ collectively saved across connected accounts.
Those savings have earned our users 30,000+ contest entries (without spending a cent on lottery tickets), and we already paid out our first winner earlier this week! Solid two weeks in our opinion, especially since we haven’t started paid acquisition yet.
Pre-launch we also built a 1,200+ person waitlist entirely through word-of-mouth, which showed the Canadian appetite was real before we ever shipped.
On Canadian market
Jared: Similar concepts have been done in the US and UK. Why hasn’t this been done in Canada before?
Benjamin: A few things had to come together.
Being based in Montreal, we got lucky on timing because in late 2023 our province modernized its contest laws and removed the Quebec-specific regulatory burden that historically made running weekly contests here basically impossible.
You also need reliable and secure read-only bank balance verification, which only became viable in Canada with new technologies over recent years.
Beyond the technical and legal stuff though, I think there's a broader Canadian story here.
A lot of ambitious founders look at our smaller market and go straight to the US, which is rational on paper, but companies like Shopify and Wealthsimple showed it's absolutely possible to build world-class consumer products here, and Canadians deserve to have them. Especially right now, when our generation is facing some of the worst affordability and savings stats we've ever seen, the bar for what gets built for Canadians needs to be higher and we want to be part of raising it.
On distinguishing $25 saved
Jared: Users get entries into the weekly draw based on how many times they save $25.
How does Lodavo distinguish between $25 I actively put away for saving vs $25 that a friend e-Transfers to my savings account because he owes me for dinner? (Wally, I know you’re reading this. Pls send the money thx)
Benjamin: Great question, and the honest answer is we don’t try to distinguish. We snapshot your balance once a week, and you earn a ticket for every $25 sitting in your connected account at that snapshot.
So if Wally finally pays his tab and you don’t immediately spend that $25 on something, it stays in your account through the next snapshot and earns you a ticket.
The behaviour we want to reward is money sitting in your account instead of being spent on gambling or things you don’t need. That’s the savings habit we think is important to build. We don’t really care where the money came from, we care that it stays with you.
On revenue model and partners
Jared: Is the prize money funded through partnerships and sponsors?
Benjamin: No other companies directly sponsor the Lodavo prizes yet, and I want to be upfront about that.
Right now we're keeping things simple by earning through general referral programs with financial product partners that we find align with our mission. The revenue from that helps fund the prize pool while we bootstrap.
That said, we've already had really productive conversations with a few big names in the space. Longer term we’d love to explore a deposit partnership with a bank too.
There are a few other revenue streams we're looking at, but the guiding principle for all of them is simple: we should only make money when our users are making good financial decisions for their situation.
On expansion
Jared: I can see this expanding from saving to also prize-linked investing - users connect their investing account and potentially get rewarded on, say, every $25 invested. Is that on the roadmap?
Benjamin: Definitely something we’re looking into.
Saving is the starting point because it’s the most universal financial habit and the biggest gap for our generation, but the same psychology applies to investing, credit building, debt paydown, RRSP contributions, all of it.
A few users have already mentioned wanting to connect and track their investment accounts too, so we’re listening closely to that feedback and looking at options.
On media coverage
Jared: Now for the hardball questions.
You’ve had media coverage recently: featured on fintech.ca, a live interview on Global News, and now this esteemed newsletter. How does the stress of a live TV interview compare to a job interview?
Benjamin: Honestly, the live TV interview was less stressful because you realize it is what it is.
With live TV there’s no going back, and you stop worrying about being perfect because you can’t be. It was my first one which was definitely stressful going in, but I just focused on talking about this project that I’m super passionate about, and that made it a lot easier.
As for job interviews, I just graduated from my co-op program so honestly I’d rather we didn’t bring this up, I’ve been through those application processes enough... haha.
On company name
Jared: Where does the name Lodavo come from? I’m guessing the “Lo” comes from “lottery.”
Benjamin: Good guess on the Lo. It sort of comes from lottery, because we want the app to feel as fun and exciting as playing the lottery, minus the possibility of losing of course.
Davo is in honour of my grandfather David, who taught me about investing growing up. He unfortunately passed away around the time I started working on the idea, so I wanted to name it in his honour.
On winning $10K prize vs hockey glory
Jared: Since you’re in Montreal, I have to ask: The Habs are up 3-2 in the series to the Sabres - what’s a better feeling, winning a $10K draw or the Habs going to the conference finals?
Benjamin: Brutal question for a Montrealer. Ten grand would be insane, and I'd honestly invest it right back into the business so that could be huge for us.
The Habs going to the conference finals would put the whole city in the streets though, and that kind of collective joy doesn't really come with a price tag. I'll have to "no comment" this one. Go Habs Go!
Thanks for answering my questions and giving more info on Lodavo - really appreciate it, Benjamin!
As a Leafs fan, I’m in the middle here choosing between another Canadian team and my neighbour right across the border in Buffalo, so I will play it diplomatically and say: Good luck to both, may the best team win.
[Me sitting here wearing a Sabres jersey under a Habs jersey under a Leafs jersey to cover all my bases].
Quick hits
Hey, thanks for reading!
Here’s last week’s post in case you missed it:
Have a great weekend. See you next week 👋
References
BMO
Wealthsimple
Stats and “one in five Canadians aged 18 to 40 uses at least one Wealthsimple product” quote come from Q1 2026 report
I emailed the company and they confirmed that the 4M+ number is for total number of users.
41.5M comes from Stats Canada population clock.
Lodavo
Q&A done through an email interview
Logos from Brandfetch
Downloading Lodavo after reading this, love your writing style too btw 🌀