Scotiabank targets Canada’s affluent South Asians in ICICI pact

Bank of Nova Scotia wants to tap into the population of affluent Canadians with ties to South Asia through a wealth-management referral partnership with one of India’s largest lenders, ICICI Bank.

It’s part of a broader push to sell fee-based services like financial planning and specialized advice to “cultural segments” in Canada that haven’t been well-served by the banking sector, according to Jacqui Allard, Scotiabank’s group head of global wealth management.

“South Asians are obviously a very large proportion of newcomers to Canada,” Allard said in an interview. “They’re differentially business owners and entrepreneurs, generating a lot of wealth in this country. But nobody is focused on that community as a segment from a wealth-management perspective.”

Scotiabank has looked at government statistics showing not just the large number of immigrants who have come to Canada from India, a bank spokesperson said, but also the high proportion of high-net-worth newcomers from that country — people who arrived under business-program and skilled-worker admission categories.

The referral arrangement will give high-net-worth clients of ICICI Bank Canada, which doesn’t have a wealth-management business in the country, access to such Scotiabank products, the Toronto-based lender said Tuesday.   
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“Wealth is a significant area of focus for Scotiabank, first, because with our relative size, we have the opportunity to grow,” Allard said, noting the firm’s smaller wealth business compared with rivals such as Royal Bank of Canada. “But also as a high-return-on-equity, low-capital-intensive business, it’s a very attractive area for us and important from an earnings diversification perspective.” 

Allard joined Scotiabank in December 2023, around the time Chief Executive Officer Scott Thomson unveiled the bank’s new strategy at an investor day in Toronto. The firm aims to increase earnings in its wealth business at a compound annual growth rate of 10% over five years, she said at the time.

Scotiabank delivered in the strategy’s first year, posting a 10% increase in net income for the division, which earned C$1.58 billion ($1.13 billion) in fiscal 2024. In 2024, it invested in KeyCorp, becoming the Ohio-based bank’s largest shareholder.

ICICI Bank has previously partnered with Royal Bank, agreeing to refer its newcomer clients to the Canadian bank to make it easier for them to open a bank account upon arrival. Allard was an executive at Royal Bank, overseeing personal-financing products, when that arrangement was struck in 2022.