Canadians Slowly Edging Up Foreign Content In Their RRSP, But Most Staying Close To Home

Toronto, ON- According to an Ipsos Reid survey conducted on behalf of RBC, RRSP holders in Canada have edged up the foreign content in their RRSPs over the past years, up from an average of 10% in 2003, to 11% in 2004 to an average of 14% today.

But while they appear to be slowly increasing their RRSP foreign content, the majority of RRSP holders do not have a large percentage of foreign content in their RRSP: Fifty-six percent, down slightly from 58% in 2004, still have less than 20% foreign content in their RRSP portfolio.

Looking ahead, one in ten RRSP holders (12%) say they plan to increase the foreign content in their RRSP in the next 12 months, primarily because they seek better returns (31%), diversification (18%) or because they feel foreign economies are doing better then the Canadian economy (7%).

Among those who don't plan to increase the foreign content in their RRSP in the next 12 months (79%), the main reasons given were they like their portfolios the way they are (18%), they like to invest in Canada (11%), and they don't have enough knowledge (11%).

These are the findings of an Ipsos Reid/RBC poll conducted from November 11th to November 21st, 2005. For the survey, a representative randomly selected sample of 1250 adult Canadian was interviewed by telephone. With a sample of this size, the results are considered accurate to within 1772.8 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what they would have been had the entire adult Canadian population been polled. The margin of error will be larger within regions and for other sub-groupings of the survey population. These data were weighted to ensure the sample's regional and age/sex composition reflects that of the actual Canadian population according to the 2001 Census data.

Please open the attached PDF to view the factum and detailed tables.

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For more information on this news release, please contact:
Ray Kong
Ipsos Reid
(416) 324-2106
[email protected]