Scotiabank to add hundreds of financial advisers to catch up with rivals
Bank of Nova Scotia plans to add hundreds of financial advisers to boost sales of mutual funds and investment products, part of a sweeping overhaul by the new management team to improve shareholder returns.
About 10 per cent of Scotiabank’s retail clients in Canada invest through the bank in mutual funds, according to wealth management head Jacqui Allard. For clients of digital-banking division Tangerine, that figure drops to six per cent. The percentages are low in part because Scotiabank doesn’t have as many financial planners and other investment specialists in its Canadian branches as competing banks do, she said.
“That’s something we absolutely have to close the gap on,” Allard told analysts and shareholders during an investor day Dec. 13.
Doubling the number of in-branch and “mobile advice” advisers will mean adding as many as 600 people to those teams over several years, Allard said. Many of those roles will go to existing Scotiabank employees, she said.
Canada’s third-largest bank by assets unveiled an updated strategy that emphasizes growth in higher-return businesses in North America while reducing the capital deployed to its vast operations in Central and South America.
Allard, whom new chief executive Scott Thomson poached from Royal Bank of Canada in July, is key to that plan. Scotiabank’s global wealth-management business earned $1.44 billion in the fiscal year ended Oct. 31, compared with $2.4 billion at Royal Bank.
Previous CEO Brian Porter tried to shore up Scotiabank’s historical weakness in wealth management with a pair of major acquisitions, buying money-management firms Jarislowsky Fraser Ltd. and MD Financial Management in 2018. The bank also owns the Dynamic line of mutual funds.
Scotiabank’s new
Read more on financialpost.com
