President of RBC Phillips, Hager & North Investment Counsel Inc. explains how this designation is equipping his firm for evolving client needs
RBC employs more CFA charterholders than any other financial firm in the world. According to the CFA institute’s own employers list, the Canadian financial giant employs 2,390 charterholders, putting it ahead of JPMorgan Chase, UBS, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley. The next largest Canadian institution — TD Bank — employs over 1,000 fewer charterholders. It’s a distinction that Vijay Parmar expresses considerable pride in, and one that the President of RBC Phillips, Hager & North Investment Counsel Inc. believes sets his company up for the future of wealth management.
Parmar explained some of how RBC managed to build such a large cohort of charterholders, through hiring, acquisitions, and internal education incentives. He outlined why the company has emphasized this particular designation as well as the investments made in other areas of expertise to support RBC’s work in wealth management. He stressed why he believes this particular designation is key for advisors as they look to the future.
“In the investment world where we now find ourselves investment solutions are more complex. For example, alternatives and private market solutions as well as wealth and financial planning solutions have become more sophisticated,” Parmar says. “When you bring all of these areas of expertise together, you really do need individuals who are highly skilled and, most importantly, highly trusted. And one of the components of the CFA program is their focus on ethics, professionalism and competency.”
That combination of ethics and expertise, Parmar argues, is ideally suited to the needs of those high net worth and ultra high net worth clients that many practices and firms have identified as their ideal target market. Many of those individuals are currently managing the sales of businesses or succession plans into the next generation of their family. He argues that the CFA designation gives a level of competency and a level of integrity that these clients expect in crucial moments.
RBC has prioritized CFA designations in its hiring because of the program’s rigorous nature. Parmar notes that obtaining a CFA charter requires over 4,000 hours of study over three levels of qualification. He notes that those who have obtained this certification have demonstrated a capacity for and willingness to work.
In addition to hiring, RBC has encouraged their employees to obtain CFA charters. Since 2016 RBC PH&N has sponsored a scholarship and mentorship program for RBC employees in Canada. He believes that the CFA program can help young employees level up their skills while showing them a career in wealth management that they might not have considered for themselves before. Scholarship winners also receive mentorship from the firm’s investment counsellors. Beyond just wealth management, though, Parmar notes that his firm has CFA’s littered throughout the organization, in HR, tech, and operations.
While the competencies and ethics stressed by the CFA program are, in Parmar’s view, key to meeting modern client needs, there are areas where a CFA education cannot fully support the work of a ‘holistic wealth manager.’ As that work increasingly enters the world of tax and estate planning beyond financial planning, CFA expertise hits some of its limits. Rather than forcing CFA charterholders to add additional designations, Parmar explains that his firm has brought on more expertise in the form of in-house lawyers and accountants. CFA education allows advisors and wealth managers to identify where other experts are required. Parmar says that his firm has built the bench strength to fill in those gaps with the right expert where and when required.
Parmar argues that this focus on certification and education is essential for an organization in the middle of a generational transition. As many experienced advisors retire and firms struggle to replace them with the next generation, Parmar believes that putting education at the core of operations can help build that pipeline of new talent. He argues that the best and brightest in the industry want to go to places where they will learn.
“The core skills that the CFA designation provides along other training that you get within an organization, I think, sets the individual up to go either deep into a certain discipline, or they can take those skills and broadly apply them across multiple disciplines, because they're learning core life or work skills that will benefit whichever area that they're working within,” Parmar says. “I would hope most organizations see that this is a critically important part of, growing their organization, attracting new people and providing the kind of client experience and outcomes that we hope to achieve for our clients.”
