For Rick Annaert, President and CEO of Waterloo, Ont.-based Manulife Securities International Ltd., the summer promises to be a busy one. Over the next several months, he will travel across the country, explaining to advi-sors the repositioning of Manulife Securities as a full-service wealth-management company.

More than 10 months have passed since its parent, Toronto-based Manulife Financial Corp. , announced it would acquire Burlington, Ont.-based Berkshire-TWC Financial Group Inc., the mutual fund and securities dealership then controlled by Michael Lee-Chin.

The deal, which closed on Aug. 31, 2007, created a sales force of 1,500 advisors with $19 billion in assets under administration. Now, after months of keeping a low profile, the newly merged company is embarking on a campaign to re-brand its products and update its expanded sales force on the changes they can expect to see.

As a result of the reorganization, two new companies will be created. As of July, Manulife Securities and Berkshire Investment Group Inc. — both members of the Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada — will merge to become Manulife Securities Investment Services Inc. , with 1,100 advisors under its banner. At the same time, the Investment Dealers Association of Canada member firm, Berkshire Securities Inc., will be renamed Manulife Securities Inc. , bringing 400 securities-licensed advisors under the Manulife brand.

Despite the proliferation of similar-sounding names, Annaert says, the overall message is relatively simple. “We are going to be no different than Assante Corp. or DundeeWealth Inc., both of which have an MFDA entity and an IDA entity,” he says. “Everyone is going to go out under the Manulife Securities name and we will be known as a full-service firm.”

Both groups of advisors will have some adjusting to do. Berkshire advisors will have to rebrand using their firm’s new name; Manulife Securities advisors will be trained on New York based – Broadridge Dataphile platform, which is being adopted by the new companies. Annaert expects that all advisors will be up and running on Dataphile by October. Both sets of advisors will be using a new client-reporting tool, Client Manager Web, which will be launched this spring.

One of the biggest challenges for Annaert will be ensuring that everyone is on the same page. “It comes down to getting all these pieces right,” he says. “Getting people to understand the rollout of the rebranding, doing the inventory and explaining the technology changes, as well, are all key issues right now.”

Annaert and his management team, including CFO/COO Frank Laferriere, have been in constant communication with advi-sors about the upcoming changes. They kicked off a 22-day road show in April, including stops in 18 cities across the country. The purpose? To spread the word about Manulife’s business decisions, as well as what advisors can expect in the months to come.

THE WHYS OF THE DECISIONS

“We want to let the advisors know the business decisions that were made and why we made them,” says Annaert. “For the Manulife Securities advisors, we have to tell them why Dataphile is a good fit. For the Berkshire advisors, we have to tell them a little bit about the merits of our program for rebranding and how we are going to harmonize the business.”

Since the acquisition deal closed, Manulife Securities has set up national conference calls, advisory boards and councils to gather feedback from advisors. “We have definitely tried to keep our ear to the ground,” says Annaert. “Whenever you embark upon change, there is always someone who finds change difficult — and we are very cautious of that. We are trying to communicate as much as possible to help everybody understand why we have to change certain categories.”

The two companies have both thrived on their independent advisor models, something that Annaert says has made the integration work that much easier to complete. The company hasn’t lost any advisors in the merger. Some Berkshire advisors may have initially thought that a company as large as Manulife might try to reduce their independence or push products on them, Annaert says, but advisors have been assured that this is not the case.

“People are naturally apprehensive about change. But it is something you can demonstrate through your own behaviour over time,” Annaert says. “Every month that goes by, more and more people understand the value that the Manulife group of companies brings to this equation — the financial strength, the resources to do this integration well, the stability and the professionalism of our rebranding materials. I believe that the whole is truly going to be greater than the sum of the parts.”

@page_break@As for communicating with clients, Berkshire has posted an overview statement on its Web site, as well as a telephone message stating: “Berkshire is a proud member of the Manulife Financial group of companies.” Later this year, Berkshire clients will be contacted by mail and by their advisors to inform them of the new branding.

Trying to limit change for both clients and advisors is one of the main reasons why the firm isn’t aggressively recruiting at the moment.

“We want to limit the amount of change that clients and advisors have to go though,” Annaert says. “Until we made the final decisions about the back-office platform and put out the communication to advisors, we felt it was unfair to recruit in that framework.

“You need to tell people where the business is going to reside and what platform they’ll be working on,” he adds. “They need to know of whom they are going to be a part before they join.”

While 2008 will be the company’s year of conversion, 2009 will be a year of growth, Annaert predicts. That is when Manulife Securities will push recruitment. For now, he stresses, he wants to be very cautious and ensure that the firm can maintain the service levels to current advisors and clients as it plans for integration and system conversions in the fall.

“We don’t want to overload with new recruits and then the back office can’t do the conversion as smoothly,” he says. “We want to make sure we can service things well today before we bring more [advisors] on board.”
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