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When Canadians ask AI assistants about wealth management, the answers name names. In our study of 900 AI answers collected in June 2026, RBC was named most often, the top four spots all went to big banks, and five independent firms cracked the top ten. In total, 102 firms appeared across the answers of ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot.
Who leads the AI answers?
RBC leads by a wide margin, named in 300 answers, roughly one of every three we collected. BMO, TD, and CIBC follow. The first independent appears at number five: Wellington-Altus, ahead of Scotiabank. Nicola Wealth, Richardson Wealth, Northwood Family Office, and Objective Financial Partners round out a top ten where half the names are not banks.
The firms AI assistants name most
That last part surprised us. The banks' brand gravity is real, but it is not a lockout. The independents that break through do it on two ingredients the banks cannot monopolize: presence on the third-party lists the engines trust, and focused content on their own sites.
Where do the engines get their answers?
We traced 8,645 sources the engines cited. Two findings stand out. First, 59.9 percent of citations pointed at firms' own websites, so what you publish is directly in play. That share is higher than most published research would predict; a University of Toronto study of AI answers across five platforms found engines systematically preferring earned media over brand-owned content (Kumar & Park, 2025), which makes the own-site share in Canadian wealth management worth measuring rather than assuming. Second, one industry publication, Wealth Professional, was cited by all four engines, and it was their award and ranking pages the engines pulled from most. Being on the right list still matters as much as ever. It just gets read by machines now.
The third-party sources AI engines cite most
Does it matter which AI you ask?
Yes, more than most firms expect. Each engine has its own sources and habits, and a firm can lead on one while being invisible on another. One top-ten independent drew more than half its mentions from a single engine and never appeared on another in fifteen days of daily testing. Visibility is not portable. It has to be earned engine by engine.
How we ran the study
We wrote 15 questions that resemble what wealthy Canadians actually ask, from "who are the best wealth management firms in Canada" to "I just sold my business, who should manage the proceeds." We put each question to all four engines every day from June 16 to 30, 2026, from a Canadian location, using a commercial answer-tracking tool. Of a planned 900 answers, 893 came back. We read every one and traced all 8,645 sources they cited. Firms are counted once per answer, and bank divisions roll up to their parent brand. The full leaderboard and source tables are in the report, and some of the underlying data tables are public.
Two limits worth naming. This is a snapshot: AI answers change from day to day, and a firm's position can move. And the study observes what the engines do, not why. We can measure who gets named and cited. But we are looking at sentiment for our next report.
Read the full report