Legal

1. What this platform is

EconCERF is an educational platform for individual investors. It exists to help people understand how investing works, how different kinds of investments behave, what they cost, and how a long-term plan is put together, so that they can make their own decisions and ask better questions of anyone who advises them.

The platform teaches through written courses, worked examples and interactive tools. It also lets you build a plan from your own numbers, so that the ideas you have just read about are shown working on figures that mean something to you rather than on an abstract example.

2. What this platform is not

This platform does not provide investment advice, financial advice, tax advice or legal advice. Nothing on it is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security, fund or other investment, and nothing on it is an offer or solicitation to do so.

It does not know your full circumstances. It does not know your debts, your job security, your health, your family obligations, your tax position, the assets you hold elsewhere, or anything else you have not typed into it. A person who advises you is responsible for understanding all of that. This platform is not that person and does not attempt to be.

3. We are not registered as an investment adviser

EconCERF is not registered as an adviser, dealer or portfolio manager with any securities regulator in Canada, and it does not manage anyone's money. We do not hold client assets, we do not place trades, and we have no access to any account you hold anywhere.

If you want advice that takes your whole situation into account and that comes with a professional obligation to you, speak to a registered adviser. You can check whether a person or firm is registered through the Canadian Securities Administrators national registration search before you deal with them, and it is worth doing.

4. The portfolios are published models, and they are not built for you

There are seven risk bands, and each one has a single model portfolio. The mix inside a band is set in advance, published, and identical for everybody placed in that band. No part of it is calculated from you as an individual. Two people in the same band are shown the same portfolio.

The funds inside it work the same way. One fund per asset class holds the standard place on a published list, chosen by an objective standard which is written down and applied in a stated order, and every part of the platform reads that same list. A fund appearing on it means it cleared the stated checks. It does not mean it is suitable for you, that it is the best available, or that anyone here thinks you should buy it. Within EconCERF Plus, you can choose from the approved alternatives. You may choose a different fund through your own brokerage, but EconCERF does not assess it or include it in your plan or reports.

The platform uses seven published risk bands. Your answers determine the highest band your profile supports, and each goal's date determines the highest band its timeframe allows. By default, the goal runs at the lower of the two. Where the band-change feature is available, you may choose a different band within the goal's timeframe limit. If you choose above the band your answers support, you must first review and acknowledge the additional risk. Every member using a band begins with the same published model allocation and default fund list; the platform does not create a unique portfolio for that individual.

Whether that model suits you, what to buy, when, and through whom, remains yours to decide. The platform does not make that choice for you, and it does not know enough about you to.

5. Figures, projections and what they are worth

Any figure the platform shows about the future is an illustration produced by a stated calculation from assumptions you can see. It is not a forecast, not a promise, and not a probability that you will reach a goal. The platform deliberately avoids the language of likelihood for exactly this reason.

Small changes to the assumptions behind a long-range figure produce large changes in the answer. That is a property of compounding, not a flaw in the calculation, and it is one of the things the courses set out to teach. Treat every long-range number you see anywhere, here or elsewhere, as a way of understanding the shape of a problem rather than as a prediction of your outcome.

6. Past performance, and the risk of loss

Historical returns are used throughout the platform because they are the honest evidence available about how asset classes have behaved. They are not a guide to what will happen next. Markets have fallen sharply before and will do so again, and a period of poor returns can last longer than most people expect.

Investing carries the risk of losing money, including the possibility of losing a substantial part of what you put in. No allocation shown here removes that risk, and none is described as safe.

7. The decisions, and the outcomes, are yours

You are responsible for what you do with anything you read or build here, including any decision to invest, not to invest, to sell, or to wait. Consider whether a decision suits your own circumstances, and take professional advice where it matters.

We are not liable for investment losses arising from your decisions. The full statement of that position is in the Terms of Use.

8. Where this applies, and who can use the platform

The platform is written for residents of Canada, and it is not currently offered to residents of Quebec. Tax treatment, account types, available products and the rules that protect investors all differ by country and by province, and much of what is taught here is specific to the Canadian context.

If you are outside Canada you are welcome to read, but the account types, tax treatment and products described will not match your own, and nothing here has been checked against the rules where you live.

9. This notice applies everywhere on the platform

Individual pages carry their own short version of this notice so that it is visible where you are reading. Those short lines are summaries of this page, and this page governs. Where a shorter line and this page appear to differ, this page is the statement we stand behind.

If anything here is unclear, or if something on the platform reads to you like advice rather than education, tell us at support@econcerf.com. That is a useful thing for us to hear and we would rather fix the wording than defend it.