Vendors
日本語
search
  2. //
  3. Reports & insights
  4. //
  5. Robo Advice Comes to Canada

Robo Advice Comes to Canada

Create a vendor selection project
Click to express your interest in this report
Indication of coverage against your requirements
A subscription is required to activate this feature. Contact us for more info.
Celent have reviewed this profile and believe it to be accurate.
We are waiting for the vendor to publish their solution profile. Contact us or request the RFX.
Projects allow you to export Registered Vendor details and survey responses for analysis outside of Marsh CND. Please refer to the Marsh CND User Guide for detailed instructions.
Download Registered Vendor Survey responses as PDF
Contact vendor directly with specific questions (ie. pricing, capacity, etc)
8 June 2016
William Trout

Newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took heat back home earlier this year for imploring his Davos audience to recognize Canada not for its resources, but for its resourcefulness. Yet the intent of his statement was less to diminish the contribution of the energy sector to the Canadian economy than to underscore its distorting effects.

Remember, oil rich Canada passed the global financial crisis with flying colors. It took the end of the energy boom, coupled with the onset of digital revolution, to open the bank dominated financial services sector to fresh air and force a stolid wealth management industry to reckon with digital entrants.

Fees for investment management services in Canada are among the world’s highest, as are barriers to industry entry. For startups, the difficulty of taking on the Big Five banks is matched by challenges in getting funded. The small Canadian VC community is oriented more toward payments solutions and cybersecurity than investments, and no wonder: it’s tough to grow scale up fast in a country of 35 million.

Yet, as I point out in my recent report, Thawing Market, The Growth of Robo Advice in Canada, there is a lot happening north of the US border. Despite the odds, investments oriented fintech is gaining steam. It’s not a coincidence that the erstwhile Bank of Montreal, or BMO, this year became the first North American bank to launch its own robo-advisor. Particularly interesting is degree to which the lessons learned from the recent disruption extend beyond Canada’s borders to the US and other markets. I’ll talk about these lessons in my next post.

Comments