How to Open an RESP in Canada

A woman I know signed her newborn up for a group RESP after a sales rep called the hospital gift shop’s parking lot her “target market” (her words, not mine) and cornered her on the way out. She didn’t compare it to anything. She just signed, because someone in scrubs told her it was the responsible thing to do. Three years and one job loss later, she missed a scheduled payment and lost a chunk of the enrollment fee she’d already paid, money that never came back.

That’s the version of opening an RESP most people stumble into. It doesn’t have to be that way. Opening a Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP) in Canada takes a Social Insurance Number for both you and your child, a provider (a bank, credit union, or investment firm), and a completed application, and most institutions will apply for the government grants on your behalf the same day you sign. The part that actually matters is which type of plan and which provider you choose before any of that paperwork happens.

What You Need Before You Start

Two Social Insurance Numbers, one for you and one for your child, are the actual gatekeeper here. Without both, no promoter (the industry term for whoever administers the RESP, whether that’s a bank, a credit union, or an investment dealer) can register the account with the Canada Revenue Agency. If your child doesn’t have a SIN yet, Service Canada can issue one shortly after birth once you have their birth certificate, and there’s no real reason to wait once that’s in hand.

The person opening the account is called the subscriber, and it’s usually a parent, but it doesn’t have to be. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, and even family friends can open an RESP and become the subscriber, provided they’re a Canadian resident with a valid SIN. Spouses and common-law partners can also open one jointly as co-subscribers. The child receiving the money is the beneficiary, and they’ll need to be a Canadian resident at the time they’re named to the plan.

Choosing Between the Three Types of RESP

This decision matters more than which bank you eventually pick, and it’s the one step people skip most often.

An individual plan holds savings for exactly one beneficiary, and that beneficiary doesn’t need to be related to you at all. It’s the simplest option, and it’s the right one if you’re saving for a single child, a grandchild, a godchild, or even a friend’s kid.

A family plan lets you name more than one beneficiary under a single account, provided every child added is related to you by blood or adoption (siblings, children, grandchildren) and was under 21 years old at the time they were named to the plan. That age-21 cutoff is a real rule, not a rough guideline, so if you’re planning to add a niece or nephew later, check the relationship definitions first, since aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews don’t count as blood relatives for RESP purposes even though they obviously are in every other sense. The upside of a family plan is flexibility: if one sibling doesn’t pursue post-secondary education, the unused grant money and investment growth can generally be redirected to a sibling within the same plan, up to that sibling’s own lifetime CESG cap.

A group plan, also called a scholarship trust, works differently enough that it deserves its own warning. These are sold by dedicated scholarship plan dealers, not banks, and your contributions get pooled with other families whose children were born the same year. You commit to a fixed payment schedule, the dealer controls where the pooled money gets invested (usually fixed income, so growth tends to be modest), and there’s an enrollment fee, often worth several thousand dollars over the life of the plan, that isn’t returned if you miss payments or your child doesn’t finish a qualifying program on the dealer’s schedule. Canada’s ombudsman for banking services has flagged this fee structure specifically, and it’s worth reading before you sign anything from a scholarship dealer, not after. You do get a 60-day window to cancel and get most of your money back if you change your mind, so that’s the deadline to actually read the fine print if you’ve already committed to one.

Where You Can Actually Open One

Banks and credit unions offer straightforward, self-directed RESPs where you (or your advisor) choose the investments, similar to how a TFSA or RRSP works. Investment firms and online brokerages offer the same self-directed structure with a wider range of investment choices, useful if you already manage your own portfolio and want the RESP to sit alongside it. Scholarship plan dealers are the group-plan providers described above, and they operate separately from traditional banks. Our comparison of RESP providers breaks down fees and account minimums across several of them if you want to shop before committing.

It’s worth calling more than one promoter before deciding, since fees, minimum contribution rules, and available investments differ more than most people expect. A self-directed individual or family plan at a bank or brokerage generally gives you the most control over both cost and investment choice.

The Application Steps From Start to Finish

Once you’ve picked a provider, the actual paperwork moves fast. You’ll provide both SINs, your own and your child’s, along with proof of your child’s Canadian residency, usually their birth certificate or a Canadian passport. You’ll name the beneficiary (or beneficiaries, for a family plan), decide whether there’s a co-subscriber, and choose your plan type. Most institutions have you sign digitally now, and the whole process can be finished in a single sitting if you have both SINs ready beforehand, which is the single biggest thing that holds people up.

Your provider will typically apply for the Canada Education Savings Grant and the Canada Learning Bond on your behalf as part of opening the account, so you generally don’t need to file separate grant applications yourself, though it’s worth confirming that explicitly with whichever provider you choose, since not every scholarship dealer handles this identically.

Applying for the Government Grants at the Same Time

This is where opening the account early actually pays off, literally. The federal government matches 20% of your annual RESP contributions through the Canada Education Savings Grant, up to $500 a year and $7,200 over your child’s lifetime, and that money only starts accumulating once contributions begin flowing into an open account. Lower and middle-income families can also qualify for the Additional CESG, an extra 10% or 20% on the first $500 contributed each year depending on adjusted family net income. For 2026, families with adjusted net income at or below $58,523 get the extra 20%, and families between $58,523 and $117,045 get the extra 10%, with those income brackets adjusted annually for inflation.

Separate from the CESG entirely, the Canada Learning Bond adds up to $2,000 to an eligible child’s RESP with zero contribution required from you. It pays $500 in the first year your family qualifies, then $100 for each additional eligible year up to and including age 15. This is the one grant that rewards simply having the account open, since eligibility is based on your family’s income, not what you deposit. If your family’s income has ever been in a lower bracket, it’s worth confirming with your provider whether your child qualifies, since this bond is free money that a surprising number of eligible families never claim.

British Columbia and Quebec residents have their own provincial top-ups layered on as well, worth asking your provider about specifically if you live in either province.

How Much to Contribute Right Away

There’s no minimum contribution required to open most self-directed RESPs, and no annual contribution requirement either, only a $50,000 lifetime cap per beneficiary across every RESP opened in their name. That said, if maximizing the CESG is your goal, $2,500 a year is the number that unlocks the full $500 grant. Split monthly, that works out to about $208 a month, which is a much easier commitment to picture and budget around than a single lump sum every December. Setting up a pre-authorized monthly deposit at account opening is one of the more useful things you can do in that first sitting, since it turns the CESG maximum into something automatic rather than something you have to remember.

Special Situations Worth Knowing About

If you’re a grandparent or relative opening an RESP for a child who isn’t legally in your care, you’ll typically need the parent or legal guardian’s involvement to complete the application, since the primary caregiver, generally whoever receives the Canada Child Benefit for that child, needs to consent before certain grants can be paid. It’s a step that surprises a lot of grandparents who assume they can simply open the account and go.

Adults over 18 can open an RESP for themselves if they’re planning to return to school and are a Canadian resident, which is a detail that gets overlooked since most RESP marketing is aimed squarely at parents of infants. And if you’ve already got some RESP contribution history from a past account that’s now dormant, our guide to RESP contribution strategy covers how to fold an existing account into a new plan without losing grant room you’ve already banked.

Mistakes to Avoid When You’re Just Starting Out

The most expensive mistake isn’t picking the wrong bank. It’s signing a group plan without reading the enrollment fee structure, or opening two separate RESPs for the same child at two different institutions without tracking the combined total against the $50,000 lifetime limit. That second one is easy to walk into by accident when a parent and a grandparent each open a plan with good intentions and never compare notes.

The other quiet mistake is treating the investment side of the account as an afterthought. A self-directed RESP still needs an actual investment choice inside it, whether that’s a GIC, an index fund, or something else, and leaving new contributions sitting in cash for years is a real cost, just one that doesn’t show up as an obvious fee on a statement. Our rundown of where to put money inside an RESP covers the tradeoffs between the two.

What to Do This Week

If you haven’t started yet, apply for your child’s SIN this week if you haven’t already, since that single document is what everything else waits on. Call two or three providers, a bank, a credit union, and one online brokerage, and ask each one directly about account fees, minimum contributions, and investment options before you commit to anything. Once you’ve picked one, bring both SINs and your child’s birth certificate to the appointment or upload, and ask the provider to confirm in writing that they’ll apply for the CESG and Canada Learning Bond automatically.

A Few More Things Families Ask

Can I open an RESP before my baby is born? Not officially. The account has to be registered to a named beneficiary with a valid SIN, so you can research providers and plan your contribution schedule in advance, but the actual RESP can’t be opened until your child has their SIN in hand.

Is there a deadline to open an RESP? The account itself can be opened at any point before the beneficiary turns 21 for most plan types, but every year you wait without a beneficiary named is a year of Canada Education Savings Grant room that goes unclaimed, since that room only converts into an actual grant once contributions start.

Do I need a financial advisor to open one? No. A self-directed RESP at most banks, credit unions, or online brokerages can be opened without an advisor, though understanding what an RESP actually is and how the pieces fit together makes the decision easier whether or not you use one.