Standard Life has found its new Canadian CEO, scooping up Charles Guay, the president and CEO of National Bank Securities.
Mr. Guay will start at Standard Life in February, replacing outgoing CEO Joseph Iannicelli who announced this past spring that he would be leaving Standard Life after six years in the role.
The incoming CEO was born in Quebec City in 1972, and is married with three children. He began his career as a fixed income trader and has done stints at RBC Dominion Securities and Fidelity Investments Canada.
Importantly, he has extensive experience in the wealth management business, which will be the key focus for Standard Life in Canada over the next decade or so.
Canada is the Scottish insurance company's largest overseas organization, accounting for more than a quarter of its profits. The company has been repositioning itself here in recent months, making changes to its brand as well as its product lineup. It is taking baby steps away from the basic insurance business towards the highly-competitive savings and investment market, which all financial institutions are hankering after as the baby boomers age. Standard Life will stop selling individual life insurance and critical illness products in Canada in the new year, as part of that transformation away from capital-intensive insurance products.
"I look upon Standard Life as a company that is targeted to helping customers with long-term savings, and the savings gap," David Nish, Standard Life plc's CEO, said a couple of weeks ago, during a stop in Toronto. "And even though Canada is a very mature savings market, it's the fourth-largest pension market in the world, people are still under-saving," he said.