Different strokes

Standard Life made the strategic decision to hire Guay at a time when the firm was shifting its focus toward investments and retirement savings and away from insurance. Guay’s arrival at Standard Life this year followed a 10-year stint at Montreal-based National Bank of Canada, where he was, most recently, CEO of National Bank Securities Inc. and senior vice president of strategies, marketing and investment solutions in the bank’s wealth-management unit. Before that, he was a regional vice president at Fidelity Investments Canada ULC and an investment advisor with RBC Dominion Securities Inc., both of Toronto.

Standard Life, by appointing a president with a track record on the investment side of the business rather than the insurance side, is sending a clear message about its new business focus.

“We’re in the midst of an important transformation,” Guay says. “Over the years, I’ve worked with many issues related to where we are shifting the business at Standard Life, around long-term savings and investments.”

Standard Life announced late last year it was exiting the business of offering individual insurance products. The firm continues to offer life insurance coverage as part of its group benefits, but no longer will sell individual life or critical illness insurance.

Guay believes this was the right decision for Standard Life, given prevailing risks for insurers. Low interest rates and disappointing stock market performance are squeezing investment returns and jeopardizing insurers’ ability to cover their future liabilities. Increasingly strict capital requirements are also a factor.

Says Guay: “We believe it’s much better to have less risk in the company, and to focus on building a more sustainable business with fee-based revenue.”

Guay is comfortable in continuing to offer life insurance on a group basis, as group policies typically are shorter in term and, therefore, less risky than individual policies. The group-insurance offerings complement Standard Life’s pension business nicely, he says, adding that the company recently merged the two business units.

Collaboration between business units is likely to become more common under Guay’s leadership. As part of that shift, even the company’s office culture is undergoing a makeover that will result in fewer enclosed offices and more open spaces. “We use our email so much,” Guay says. “We need to create an environment in which people can collaborate more easily.”

Organizational change is something Guay has handled many times. At National Bank, Guay oversaw the consolidation of Altamira Investment Services Inc. and Altamira Financial Services Ltd. into National Bank Securities in 2008. A larger, bankwide reorganization that year resulted in various structural changes to the bank’s wealth-management operations.

“You have to anticipate the trends,” Guay says, “the customer needs [and] where the change is going to bring us opportunities.”

It was this anticipation of needs, Guay says, that prompted Standard Life to reposition itself as a provider of retirement savings products. With Canada’s aging population and the growing retirement savings gap, Standard Life has an opportunity to beef up its offerings in this area.

In the year ahead, Guay plans to continue increasing the company’s emphasis on this market. “In a very competitive world,” he says, “you cannot be everything to everyone. We need a bit more focus.”

Guay also hopes to strengthen Standard Life’s profile in the competitive retirement-savings market by investing in advertising and efforts to increase brand awareness. “I think that in the past,” he says, “we have punched below our weight, and we can do much better going forward.”

Strengthening distribution is also high on Guay’s list of priorities. Because Standard Life does not have in-house financial advisors, its relationships with market intermediaries are critical, he says: “We need to increase both the number and the quality of the these relationships.”

Guay hopes to establish more strategic partnerships with distributors, similar to one the company announced last year with Vancouver-based Qtrade Financial Group. Under that alliance, Standard Life segregated funds and pension products are available at certain credit unions outside Quebec as part of the broader suite of Qtrade wealth-management products being offered by those credit unions.

Guay, originally from Quebec City – where he earned a bachelor of business administration, with majors in finance and marketing, from Université Laval – has been living in Montreal since 1998. He and his wife, Isabelle, have three young children, and are expecting another.

Guay says that the lessons he learned in the pool have resonated throughout his financial services career. Swimming competitively taught him the importance of teamwork, discipline and hard work, he says: “Being disciplined on a daily basis is something that is slowly developed. It doesn’t happen just like that.” IE

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