EVP of Wealth Management outlines how the day to day will change for Richardson advisors, what his firm plans to do with their third wealth management brand
iA Financial now has a third brand and a third stream of its wealth management business. Following its $597 million purchase of RF Capital Group Inc., also known as Richardson Wealth, iA Financial Executive Vice-President of Wealth Management outlined his firm’s plans for the Richardson business. Stephan Bourbonnais explained that the Richardson brand will be run independently next to the Investia and iA Private Wealth brands, offering three distinct client offerings and three streams for advisors to choose from should they seek to go independent with iA Financial.
“I want to be the top choice when advisors are thinking about going independent and by having three different channels with three different names, what it means is we're all about your business your way,” Bourbonnais says. “So you come to us, we'll sit down, we'll review, but we have three distinctive offerings that are operating with the same values. They’re all about independence, open architecture and advisors as partners, that doesn't change, but the way you will conduct your business based on your preferences and your needs will feel and look different depending on the channel you're in.”
Bourbonnais explains that this goal of a third distinct stream was some of why iA Financial chose to keep the Richardson name and brand distinct in this acquisition. The decision to acquire Richardson, however, began with Bourbonnais and Richardson President & CEO Dave Kelly. Bourbonnais explains that in his initial conversations with Kelly he found a degree of alignment in both philosophy and ambition that made him think the two companies could work well together.
Richardson now gives iA a leg up in areas they had not necessarily specialized in before. Bourbonnais notes that his firm did not offer a corporate partnership model in the same vein as Richardson. They also had not yet made the same kinds of investments in estate and financial planning services. Richardson, he notes, had a significant service offering that included those sides of the business. Now iA Financial can leverage Richardson’s cohort of insurance consultants, estate planners, and financial planners across Canada to expand the broader range of services offered across all three channels.
In terms of Richardson advisors’ day-to-day, Bourbonnais says his goal is to make the transition as seamless as possible. The fact that iA is keeping the Richardson brand and operations distinct, without changes to the platform, offices, or branch manager relationships, should help with that goal. Moreover, historical client data and performance data will all be kept as is.
What Richardson advisors will see, he says, is an acceleration in some of the firm’s growth goals and targets. That includes adding a CRM and a data warehouse along with other improvements in the overall technology stack. The existing desktops that were built at iA Private Wealth, Bourbonnais explains, will be brought over to Richardson Wealth. He notes, too, the support that iA can provide on the product side through their global asset management team.
For iA advisors, under either the Investia or iA Private Wealth brands, Bourbonnais says the deal will amount to business as usual for them. Even in instances where they may be operating nearby a Richardson branch, Bourbonnais notes that the streams will continue to operate distinct from one-another. One area where he thinks there may be opportunity for future cross-stream work is in succession planning. His firm is already working on ways to move advisors from Investia to iA Private Wealth seamlessly, through dual licensing and certifications. As more advisors retire, Bourbonnais says his firm may leverage existing talent pipelines in each of their three streams to create appropriate successors for established practices.
He hopes that the overarching narrative advisors take from the deal is that scale comes with significant advantages in the advisory business.
“I always say to my team, 90 per cent of the assets under administration in Canada are with the banks, and 10 per cent left for the independents so it's important for us to grow and be able to have the same strength and capabilities that the big banks have if we want to compete in that space,” Bourbonnais says. “I think that's the message with the transaction that we announced Monday. We are serious in wealth management and want the industry to recognize iA as a significant independent player in this space."
”
