Does CIPF cover my losses if my investments drop?

No, and this is the single most important thing to understand about it. CIPF covers property a failed dealer cannot return, not changes in the value of that property. Market losses, poor advice and underperformance are never covered by any Canadian protection fund.

Is my robo-advisor account covered?

Generally yes. Robo-advisors hold client assets through custodian brokerages, and those custodians are CIRO members backed by CIPF. Check which firm actually holds your assets; that is the entity whose insolvency CIPF would cover.

What should I do if my brokerage fails?

Usually nothing at first: the insolvency trustee and CIPF coordinate the transfer of client accounts to another dealer, and you will be contacted with instructions. If property is missing, you file a claim with CIPF within the deadline set for the insolvency, typically 180 days.

CIPF (Canadian Investor Protection Fund)

FCPE (Fonds canadien de protection des épargnants) in French

Quick definition

CIPF (Canadian Investor Protection Fund) protects the property in your investment accounts, your cash and securities, if a CIRO-member investment dealer becomes insolvent, up to $1 million per account category. It covers missing property, never market losses.

What CIPF protects

When you hold stocks, ETFs, bonds, mutual funds or cash at a brokerage, that property belongs to you, not to the firm. CIPF exists for the rare scenario where a CIRO member investment dealer becomes insolvent and cannot return everything it was holding for you. In that case, CIPF makes up the shortfall so you get your property back, up to the coverage limits.

The limits: $1 million per account category

Coverage is up to $1 million per account category (as of July 2026), and the categories work like this:

General accounts (cash, margin, TFSAs and other non-registered-retirement accounts) are combined into one category with a single $1 million limit.
Registered retirement accounts (RRSPs, RRIFs, LIRAs, LIFs and similar) are combined into a second category with its own $1 million.
RESPs form a third separate category with another $1 million.

The critical distinction: missing property, not market losses

This is the point people most often get wrong. CIPF covers missing property: shares or cash that a failed dealer cannot return to you. It never covers the value of an investment going down, a portfolio that underperformed, bad advice, or fraud committed by an advisor at a firm that remains solvent. If your shares lose half their value in a crash, CIPF owes you nothing; if your solvent brokerage's advisor steered you into terrible investments, that is a complaint and possibly a lawsuit, not a CIPF claim.

Put simply: CIPF guarantees that what is yours comes back to you. It does not guarantee what it is worth.

Automatic, and nearly universal

There is nothing to sign up for. Coverage applies automatically when you have an account at a CIRO member firm, and CIRO membership covers virtually every Canadian brokerage: full-service investment dealers, discount brokers, and the custodians that hold assets for robo-advisors. If you are unsure, member firms display the CIPF logo, and the CIPF website lists them all.

Why claims are rare

In practice, Canadian rules require dealers to keep client property segregated from the firm's own assets. When a dealer fails, client accounts are usually transferred intact to another dealer, and most insolvencies end with clients recovering everything without CIPF paying a dollar. CIPF is the backstop for the shortfall cases, and its record of making eligible clients whole within the limits is intact.

CDIC vs CIPF vs Assuris

Canada splits financial protection into three regimes, one per type of institution: CDIC for bank deposits, CIPF for brokerage accounts, and Assuris for insurance contracts. Which one covers you depends on the product you hold, not on which company's logo is on the building.

Canada's three protection plans (as of July 2026)
Plan	Protects	Limit
CDIC	Deposits (savings, chequing, GICs) if a member bank fails	$100,000 per depositor, per category, per institution
CIPF	Cash and securities if a member investment dealer becomes insolvent	$1 million per account category
Assuris	Insurance contract guarantees (annuities, life insurance) if a life insurer fails	Varies by benefit; e.g. $5,000 per month or 90% for annuity income

In Canada

CIPF's French name is the FCPE (Fonds canadien de protection des épargnants). The current fund is itself the product of a 2023 merger: the old CIPF combined with the MFDA's investor protection fund when CIRO was created, so investment dealer and mutual fund dealer clients now share one protection fund. It is funded by assessments on member firms, not by government.

One practical implication of the category math: an investor with a TFSA, an RRSP and an RESP at the same insolvent dealer could have up to $3 million of protection across the three categories. Note that the TFSA counts within the general category, a quirk that differs from CDIC's treatment of TFSAs as their own category.

Worked example

Anika holds $800,000 of ETFs and $50,000 of cash in her RRSP, plus $300,000 in a non-registered account, at a discount brokerage that becomes insolvent. Her assets were segregated, and in the wind-down her accounts are transferred to another dealer with everything accounted for. CIPF pays nothing because nothing is missing; she simply logs in somewhere new.

Now suppose the failed firm's records show a $60,000 shortfall in her RRSP cash. Her registered category coverage is $1 million (as of July 2026), far above the missing amount, so CIPF makes her whole. What CIPF would never reimburse is the $120,000 her ETFs lost in the market downturn that helped sink the firm; market losses are hers, in good times and bad.

See it in actionFuture Value Calculator

Reviewed by Alexandre Bernier, CFP®, CIM®, PFP®·Updated July 2026