Manulife’s woman on the move

You might be tempted to use the word “daredevil” in describing Allard, the newly appointed president of Manulife Asset Management Canada, the Canadian investment arm of Toronto-based Manulife Asset Management Ltd.’s asset-management division. But Allard would beg to differ.

“I am adventurous, but I am no daredevil,” says Allard, who is also the parent firm’s global chief operating officer, a position she has held since April 2008. “I am a firm believer in taking calculated risks.”

Allard’s sense of adventure, and her knack for testing limits without going over the edge, will be the basis of her leadership as she takes the helm of Manulife AM Canada and strives to grow its business locally and abroad.

Currently, the Manulife AM parent has $207 billion in assets under management worldwide, of which Manulife AM Canada accounts for $41 billion.

The Canadian arm manufactures a suite of equity, fixed-income and balanced funds for its clients — institutional inves-tors such as pension funds, endowments and large financial services institutions, as well as retail investors — who have access to its products through Toronto-based Manulife Mutual Funds.

Manulife AM Canada also acts as a distributor of funds on behalf of its global Manulife AM partners, such as Manulife AM U.S. and Manulife AM Asia.

“Historically, Canadian teams built products for the Canadian market,” Allard says. “The goal is to leverage those products more broadly in Canada, as well as beyond Canada.”

That goal does not mean hitting a specific AUM target for the Canadian team. Instead, Allard says, it means building the right team, along with the right product mix.

So far, Manulife AM has hired two new executives: Monika Skiba, a senior portfolio manager who will create a new team to manage the Canadian asset-management group’s Canadian core equity funds; and Adam Neal, who will act as the new head of Canadian institutional sales and relationship management, to develop the distribution of the institutional business.

In addition to growing the Canadian business locally, Allard wants to increase the asset-management division’s distribution of products abroad, especially among its international partners; the division currently operates in 17 countries.

To do so, the performance of Manulife AM Canada’s funds must be competitive, because worldwide Manulife partners do not give preference to Manulife products, Allard says: “We have to earn our seat at the table.”

Allard would also like to see Manulife AM Canada offer its local clients more products manufactured by the parent’s other global offices. For example, the best-selling product in Canada for Manulife Mutual Funds is Manulife Strategic Income Fund, managed by Manulife AM U.S.

At the same time, Allard plans to continue focusing on what has become her personal project since she started at Manulife AM Canada: integrating the front-, middle- and back-office platforms of the division’s global offices. Prior to Allard’s arrival, they were all using different systems.

“As a firm, we greatly value the boutique nature of our empowered portfolio-management teams,” Allard says. “But we lacked a global operating model to connect them, in terms of exchanging ideas and sharing research.”

The North American and European offices’ systems have been fully integrated. The integration of the Asian arm is three-quarters of the way there and should be completed by next year.

Allard has spent much of her career solving organizational puzzles. If an organization is the sum of its technology, trading and operations platforms, Allard’s job is to fit the pieces together in an orderly way.

Allard says she knew from an early age that she was going to pursue a career that required broad-based creative thinking: “I like connecting the dots of things and fitting them into the bigger picture.”

Born in Ottawa, Allard had a relatively itinerant childhood that would prepare her for a career characterized by travel. Her father, an information-technology executive, had to relocate frequently for his career; by the age of 17, Allard had lived in five cities across Canada — including Toronto, Montreal and Saskatoon.

After graduating from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., with a bachelor of arts in economics, Allard received a scholarship to pursue her master of business administration at Bentley University in Boston. Upon graduating from Bentley in 1995, Allard was offered a position with Boston-based State Street Corp. as senior consultant to a process-engineering group. The group focused on finding efficiencies within corporate processes, such as shortening trade-settlement times.

Although Allard hadn’t planned on staying in the U.S. after graduating, she welcomed that offer: “It was a great opportunity to grow my work experience abroad.”

Later that year, she accepted a position leading a re-engineering project with Sydney-based State Street Australia Ltd. While in Australia, Allard was promoted to vice president of a mutual fund client-service group, a position she held until October 2000.

“It was that role,” Allard says, “that really helped me develop my skills as a general manager.”

After three years in Australia, Allard was ready for change. She left State Street in October 2000 for a brief stint as a senior relationship manager with Dublin-based Bank of Ireland Asset Management, the institutional division of Bank of Ireland, which has since been acquired by State Street Global Advisors Ltd. of Boston.

In January 2002, Allard rejoined State Street as vice president of business consulting services, and was based in London. In that position, she led components of the integration team following the firm’s acquisition of Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank Global Securities Services.

By April 2004, Allard was back in Canada, as vice president of technology with State Street in Toronto. That same year, she was promoted to senior vice president of global technology services, North America, overseeing the technology services for the firm’s offices across Canada and the U.S.

“Moving so much in my childhood has made me very adaptable to settling into new places,” Allard says. “As a leader, I believe I am much more culturally sensitive [for] having lived in various countries.”

In April 2008, Allard joined a former colleague from State Street Canada, Jean-François Courville, who is now president and CEO of Manulife’s asset-management division.

“I respected him at State Street,” Allard says, “and I knew he would be a dynamic leader to work with.”

That move has paid off for Allard, who is comfortable in her role as a leader at Manulife.

“You can’t plan everything on your path,” she says, “but you can react in a way that allows you to take advantage of the experience.”

While walking along the ledge of the CN Tower isn’t a typical weekend activity for Allard, she likes to keep her hobbies varied and adventurous — albeit usually on solid ground. For example, she can be found taking a French-language class or dabbling in the kitchen, experimenting with new dishes for herself and her banker husband, Richard.

“I am always taking up new activities,” Allard says. “It keeps things fresh.”  IE