You could say that luc paiement is something of a paradox: he’s a company man with an independent streak.

The co-president and co-CEO of Montreal-based National Bank Financial Ltd. , with which he has spent his entire career, says he’s committed to keeping the retail brokerage division as free as possible from the influence of NBF’s big-bank parent.

“We like the stability and financial strength of being bank-owned, but we want to be more flexible for our advisors, more entrepreneurial,” says Paiement, 47. “Sometimes it’s a management challenge. But that’s how we’ve done it the past 25 years, and we work very hard to keep in that way.”

Last fall, National Bank of Canada named Paiement co-head of NBF, responsible for the 740-advisor retail division, as well as the firm’s correspondent network, corporate banking and investment banking and research arms.

Ricardo Pascoe, based in Toronto, is NBF’s other co-president and co-CEO; he is responsible for institutional equities and fixed-income, derivatives, U.S. operations and treasury.

Paiement says that his long experience in retail gives him knowledge of the needs of advisors. His position on the parent’s executive committee, which came with the promotion to NBF co-head, gives him an opportunity to advocate the brokerage’s interests at the board level, he says.

Paiement headed the retail division for four years before taking the reins at NBF. During that time, he says, he worked at re-establishing a sense of belonging among the advisors — something that had slipped somewhat in the years since the parent bank merged Lévesque Beaubien Geoffrion Ltd. with Toronto-based First Marathon Inc. in 1999 to create NBF.

“We went back and talked to our advisors; we answered their questions,” Paiement says. “I would say, over the past three or four years, we regained that sense of belonging.”

During that time, Paiement took several steps to give advisors the sense that they were “partners” rather than employees, he says. His moves have included providing profit-sharing opportunities, entrepreneur accounts (in which the advisor and the company chip in for business-building elements such as publicity) and support for either fee-based or transaction-based business.

Paiement also has overseen the gradual transition of NBF from a firm catering to all kinds of investors to one more geared toward high net-worth clients — a process, he says, that is not completed. Although the shift to high net-worth clients is one that many brokerages have made over recent years, Paiement says, it took time and effort to get all NBF advisors to buy in to the new focus.

The parent bank’s ongoing efforts to cross-sell more bank products — including high-interest accounts, mutual funds and wrap programs — through its different arms, including NBF, will not compromise the brokerage’s commitment to advisor independence, Paiement says.

“We’re not pushing hard, but we’re offering bank product to our network,” says Paiement. “If brokers want to get involved in that, fine. Brokers who don’t want to get involved, that’s also fine.”

He adds that some NBF advisors have been asking for more bank products: “They understand that some bank product could be good for their clients and good for the overall retention of clients.”

Some NBF advisors outside Quebec have been asking the brokerage to step up efforts to raise the brand profile, he says, adding that although he has heard the complaints, there probably won’t be a big change in strategy in the short term.

“For many years, brokers told us, ‘We don’t need the logo of the bank; we can do our own publicity and marketing’,” Paiement says. “We gave them the leeway to do their own stuff in their own communities, but they knew from Day 1 that they couldn’t count on branding. Will that change? It will change a little bit, but not drastically.”

Nevertheless, Paiement would like to see NBF, which has 470 advisors in Quebec and 270 in the rest of Canada, continue to expand outside its home province. He also wants to continue attracting new advisors, both rookies and seasoned veterans at other firms, to add to his advisor base and eventually replace existing NBF advisors who plan to retire over the next five or so years.

Although NBF would like to make an acquisition, Paiement says, there are few interesting targets and every other brokerage is also looking. He adds that he would be reluctant to make an acquisition just for the sake of it.

@page_break@“We don’t want to go back on what we have done,” he says. “We’ve worked hard; our advisors have worked hard. We need to keep a certain standard. We will try to stay disciplined.”

Paiement, who was born in Laval, Que., and lives in Montreal with his wife and two children, stresses the “personal” in his management style, saying it remains the most enjoyable part of his job. He says NBF advisors and staff know they can contact him directly, and he often phones advisors himself to congratulate them for having a good month or to find out what’s going on. And that goes for clients, as well.

“Whenever there’s a complaint or whatever, I’ll call the client,” Paiement says. “There’s nothing like calling clients on a Saturday afternoon. They’re surprised and they’re happy to have a chance to tell their story.”

Paiement, who holds a bachelor’s degree in commerce from Concordia University, started working at Lévesque Beaubien straight out of school as a 21-year-old registered representative, and has steadily moved up the corporate ladder.

He holds no other post-secondary degree. “I’ve been too busy working,” he says.

After four years as a registered rep, Paie-ment became a producing branch manager. In 1988, Lévesque Beaubien was acquired by National Bank of Canada, and in 1989 it was merged with Montreal-based brokerage Geoffrion Leclerc, another National Bank acquisition. That year, Paiement became part of the management team of the merged entity’s retail network, all the while retaining his book of clients.

In 1994, Paiement’s career took a detour, when he was asked to head the parent bank’s investment-banking arm.

“It was an interesting move,” says Paie-ment, adding that it allowed him to run a national organization for the first time. Four years later, he was shifted over as head of institutional sales and trading. He helped in the 1999 acquisition and integration of First Marathon, and that same year was named one of the country’s top young executives. In 2002, he shifted back to retail as president.

Paiement says he travels more today as co-head of NBF, and it is mostly to larger centres such as Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver or New York rather than to NBF branches in Kelowna, B.C., or Chicoutimi, Que. — places he used to visit as head of retail.

Now that he is six months into his new post, Paiement says, the shared management structure at NBF is working well. Pascoe is the financial guru who worked in New York and London before joining NBF three years ago, while Paiement is the communicator and the NBF career man.

“We complement each other well,” Paie-ment says. “We talk regularly and we usually come to a consensus on just about everything. Business today is so complex that there is plenty of room for two guys to run a company.” IE