Andy Mitchell, who guided Worldsource Financial Management Inc. (WFM) for more than seven years, left his position as president of the Markham, Ont.-based mutual fund dealer on June 28.

Mitchell, a veteran of the investment industry, has been named managing director and head of asset management distribution at SEI Investments Canada Co.

“Worldsource is a great firm and will continue to be great,” Mitchell said in an interview with Investment Executive. “There is great leadership and the owner [Guardian Capital Group Ltd.] is engaged and committed. But sometimes in life you get an opportunity you just can’t pass up. My true passions reside in working with advisors to build their business.”

In his new capacity with SEI, Mitchell will be doing just that. He will also be responsible for developing new partnerships with distributors and launching SEI’s “goals based” portfolios in Canada. By all indications, Mitchell’s departure from Worldsource was amicable.

“From a personal standpoint,” he said, “I wouldn’t have made this decision if I wasn’t confident that the firm was on very good footing and run by very capable people.”

Mitchell’s replacement with WFM will be John Hunt, president and architect of the firm’s IIROC division, Worldsource Securities Inc. (WSI).

Hunt said the decision to have a single leader running the firm’s MFDA and IIROC channels was a matter of efficiency. More important, he said, the change in management responsibilities will have no impact on how the firm’s advisors choose to run their practices.

“We never have and never will push or force [advisors] to move from one platform to another,” Hunt said. “The most important thing is the firm’s philosophy on the independence of the advisor. We have some advisors who have chosen to move from one platform to another but that is their choice and we want to [help them] facilitate that.”

Mitchell agrees that the change in leadership structure is a smart and likely necessary move by Worldsource.

“It makes sense to me to have one person as the leader of the business,” he said, “and have service models supported by very good people looking after the advisor population. Most firms — the Assantes, IPCs, etc. — have already done that, so [Worldsource] is probably more late to the game than early on that front.”

Last year, Worldsource became the first dealer to enter an agreement to offer SEI’s goals-based portfolios, which the firm says are designed to mitigate risk relative to absolute investment returns. Mitchell said these products have already been introduced in the U.S. and the U.K.