Larry Bates spent over 35 years in the investment banking business. At the end of his career, Larry became concerned with the fees the banking industry was charging regular Canadians, stripping away most of the gains they could have received from their investments.

After leaving the banking industry, Larry decided to become an investor advocate and help Canadian investors get better returns for their money, so he wrote the book “Beat The Bank.”

Canada has one of the highest mutual fund fees in the world, and Canadians have learned to trust, almost blindly, their banking system, so most Canadian don’t question the high fees they are paying. Most of them are unaware of the high cost of investing because they are under the false impression that banks will look after them, they see the banking system as if it was one more branch of the government, but they are wrong. Banks are there to make money, like any other business, and they are primarily accountable to their shareholders.

Canadian banks:

1. Tell savers that investing is complicated and that they should not bother, and
2. Discretely subtract their fees from their client’s account without sending a bill.

To give a reference point of how much Canadians are overpaying for their investments, Vanguard in the United States, charges 0.05% for some mutual funds, whereas a typical Canadian mutual fund charges 2.50%. That’s 50 times as much, for an inferior product. That fee is taken out of investor’s pocket, year after year, whether the stock market does well or not.

But some Canadians are waking up from the banking spell and searching other alternatives such as index mutual funds, ETFs, $0 commission ETF trading from online brokers shuch as Questrade or subscrition based robo advisors such as NestWealth.

In his book, Larry talk about

• Wealth Builders: amount, time, and rate of return.
• Wealth killers: fees, taxation, and inflation.

Larry provides a step-by-step guide to investing using more efficient, lower cost, investment products to get a better return for your money.

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