Grow your business

National Bank Financial - Wealth Management (NBFWM) is a division of National Bank Financial Inc. (NBF) and a trademark owned by National Bank of Canada (NBC) that is used under licence by NBF. NBF is a member of the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) and the Canadian Investor Protection Fund (CIPF), and is an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of NBC, a public company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: NA).

I’m excited about what we’re building at National Bank. 

I get to come to work every day and be surrounded by people who are passionate about they do. 

What’s great is that every advisors’ business looks different, whether it’s their team structure, how they market themselves, their core clients – everyone is working on building something that’s really specific to their vision.

But when I think about what brings us together, it’s our passion to have an impact.  Whether it’s clients, colleagues or our communities, there’s always that lens on what we can be doing better.  This is what our culture is really about.

Moving your business is definitely a tough decision. So I actually completed due diligence at four financial institutions for several years before choosing National Bank. And I had several criteria that the financial institution had to meet.   

Number one: client and practice safety.  I mean, if your clients are safe, you're golden. 870 advisors with an average  tenure of over 20 years of service. So, for succession planning, the experience  is definitely here for your practice.   

Secondly, obviously, I want them to be client- and advisor-centric. If you put your clients first, as you all know, your practice will thrive.  And I truly think this is due to the fact that National Bank reinvests itself.  It invests millions of dollars every year, and as a result, the surveys show that they're definitely industry leaders and not industry followers, which is quite typical.  

The third criteria the financial institution had to meet was the people at National. On my due diligence trip to the National head office in Montreal, I met nothing but incredible young people. These were fresh-faced, happy, fire-in-the-belly, go-getter middle managers who were highly competitive. They were excited about improving National to give the best client experience possible and exceed expectations.  And not only that—they had the freedom to do it because they weren't being micromanaged. You can't teach that attitude National Bank has instilled—instead, hired—it. The people I met shared their desire with my team to serve clients. They were open-minded when I outlined various ways I wanted to run my business. I never heard the word "can't" or "no." Instead, they responded, “Let's figure out how we can do it that way. My impressions after I did my due diligence trip and actually started working at National—my impressions of National were confirmed tenfold.  When several advisors actually came and knocked on my door my first day at work, they all had been here for more than 20 years. And some of them looked at me and said, "Yeah, we kind of looked around to see if the grass... you know, we'd never really looked around to see if the grass is greener. What's it like out there?" And I said, "Yeah, it's not greener, so don't bother looking." I actually did meet a couple that left National Bank, but they actually ended up coming back to work at National after working somewhere else—which I had never seen before in my 35 years.   

Their very young president, Jonathan Durocher, who, for lack of a better term, simply gets it.  He knows our edge or competitive advantage is preserving our entrepreneurial attitude.  So, he hires entrepreneurs, and he lets them  be entrepreneurs and actually run their business.   

On our first four days here, my partner Cameron Lienau and I phoned all of our clients to get them to agree to move. We then handed a single piece of paper with a phone number, client name, to the onboarding team—and they took it from there.  We hadn't touched a piece of paper for six months, and our clients were very pleased. And it was really, really a white-glove service.  

Jonathan, the president of National, actually phoned me up in the middle of the process and  he says, "We're moving faster than we thought  was possible. We've never seen this before.  So, we're going to bring in more people."  So we flew in people from other cities  to help with the onboarding process—to  make the onboarding team even bigger. As a result, from the time we walked out of our present financial institution and  sat down at National Bank, up  until the time that all of our  clients had arrived here and all of  their assets here, was only 72 days.   

On big decisions like this, I did waste too much time in analysis paralysis—trying to convince myself not to move my business when I knew in my gut it was time to leave. You know, advisors that have been around for a while like you—we're extremely loyal, and it's a lot of work to move, and we don't want to put   our clients and team through that. So, it's a big decision. But bottom line: if you’re not happy where you are, and most of your days are spent negotiating  with your own head office or partner, and this is waking you up at 3 in the morning  because you're in a struggle—it's time to move. If you go on the due diligence trip to Montreal for National Bank, I know I will be calling you partner, and I know you will be working at National Bank.