HIGH NET WORTH

"Accredited investor" isn't a certificate. It's three numbers.

No exam, no application, no official registry check at the door — just income, asset, or net worth thresholds that determine what you're legally allowed to be offered.

Private equity, venture capital, hedge funds, private real estate and mortgage funds — all of it sits behind a regulatory line most people have heard of but couldn't actually define. It's not a credential you earn. It's a set of financial thresholds under Canadian securities law.

The actual thresholds — National Instrument 45-106

An individual qualifies as an accredited investor by meeting any one of these:

Test	Threshold
Income	Over $200,000/yr individually (or $300,000 combined with a spouse), in each of the past two years, with reasonable expectation it continues
Financial assets	Over $1,000,000, alone or with a spouse (cash, securities, and investment contracts — not your home or other real estate)
Net assets	Over $5,000,000, alone or with a spouse (broader than financial assets — includes real estate)

Meet any one of these and you qualify — there's no application to submit or certificate to obtain. In practice, the fund or dealer offering the investment asks you to confirm your status in writing when you invest.

A lower tier exists too: the eligible investor

Below accredited investor status, a separate "eligible investor" category opens up a narrower set of exempt-market opportunities at a meaningfully lower bar:

Net assets of at least $400,000, alone or with a spouse, or
Net income before tax of at least $75,000 in each of the past two years

This tier exists specifically to widen access to the exempt market somewhat without fully opening it to anyone.

What accredited status actually unlocks

Private equity and venture capital funds
Hedge funds
Private real estate funds and Mortgage Investment Corporations/Trusts (MICs/MITs)
Any investment offered through the "exempt market" — sold without a prospectus, outside the standard public disclosure regime

Why the regulatory line exists at all — and its real limits

The logic: someone with significant income, assets, or professional financial expertise is presumed better positioned to evaluate — and absorb — risks that come without the disclosure protections a public prospectus requires. Whether that assumption always holds is a fair question; meeting an income or asset threshold says nothing about whether someone actually understands what they're buying, or should put a meaningful share of their portfolio into something this illiquid.

What the thresholds don't tell you. Qualifying isn't the same as it being a good idea. Private investments are typically illiquid for years, valued infrequently (sometimes only quarterly, by the manager itself, not an independent market), and carry fee structures — often a management fee plus a share of profits — that public funds don't. None of that is disclosed by the accreditation test; it's on you to actually evaluate.

The honest bottom line: qualifying as an accredited investor is a real, meaningful unlock, and Canada's thresholds are lower than many people assume — $1 million in financial assets, excluding your home, gets there for a lot of people who don't think of themselves as ultra-wealthy. Whether to actually use that access is a separate, more important question about liquidity needs, diversification, and genuinely understanding what you're buying.

See your real financial assets and net worth in one place — the actual numbers behind whether you clear these thresholds.

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