Toronto is leading the way in Canada’s burgeoning fintech sector, but Calgary, Montreal and Vancouver should be ramping up their fintech efforts, says a new report.
A report published on Tuesday by The Conference Board of Canada finds that each of Canada’s four main financial centres has specific strengths in different aspects of the financial sector.
For example, Toronto leads in wealth management, fund management, banking, insurance, and back-office activities. Montreal’s key strengths include pensions, derivatives, and private equity. Calgary is big in investment banking (particularly mergers and acquisitions), and facilitating foreign direct investment, along with private equity, wealth management, and corporate banking. And Vancouver concentrates on wealth management, venture capital, foreign direct investment, and trade finance, among other things.
As for the emerging fintech sector, Toronto has the strongest role in the industry, the report says, followed by Montreal.
In addition, a survey that was carried out as part of the research (which was funded by trade groups, Advantage BC, Finance Montréal, Toronto Financial Services Alliance, and Calgary Economic Development) finds that each of the cities should be further developing fintech in order to help improve its position as a financial centre.
Canada’s strengths as a global financial centre should be more actively marketed, the survey finds, and this marketing would be more effective as a combined effort.
“In essence, respondents were suggesting that the future of the sector would be better if all of the cities worked together,” the report says.
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