IA Financial Group President and CEO Denis Ricard, who has spent his entire 40-year career with iA, has been laser-focused on expanding the company.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
IA Financial IAG-T chief executive Denis Ricard is on the hunt for more acquisitions with $1.4-billion of capital at the ready, as he looks to boost the company’s U.S. insurance operations as well as recruit independent advisers to its Canadian wealth-management arm.
During a shareholder meeting in Toronto this week, Mr. Ricard told investors that capital deployment was the company’s top priority as it aims to increase its core return-on-equity target – a financial calculation that measures a company’s profitability – to 17 per cent, up from the current 15 per cent.
Formerly known as Industrial Alliance, Quebec City-based iA Financial has steadily grown over the past decade into a leading insurance company and independent wealth manager. With more than two dozen subsidiaries in financial services, the group now manages $259.4-billion in assets as of the end of 2024 – up from $173-billion in 2018, when Mr. Ricard stepped in as CEO.
It is a top seller of segregated funds, with a third-place market share, and has become a dominant player in individual life insurance in Canada.
But unlike most of its peers in the financial-services industry, it also operates independent businesses in property and casualty insurance, group health benefits, retirement savings and auto-dealer services – where iA partners with car dealerships to offer extended warranty protection for vehicle buyers.
“We would be interested to grow in all the businesses we’re in now,” Mr. Ricard said in an interview with The Globe and Mail. “But in terms of opportunities, there are more opportunities in the U.S. It’s a more fragmented space and we can also broaden the scope in the kind of products we can offer on the life-insurance side.”
Mr. Ricard, who has spent his entire 40-year career with iA, has been laser-focused on expanding the company as CEO. He has spent more than $2-billion across 15 acquisitions, continuing his predecessor’s strategy to grow the company beyond its Quebec roots and across Canada. (The company has completed 70 deals since 2000.)
The explosive expansion has paid off for shareholders. IA Financial has grown to $20-billion in annual premiums and deposits, up from $2.2-billion when it first went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 2000. The share price hit an all-time high of $141 earlier this month – up more than 106 per cent from five years prior.
“For a long time iA’s seemingly disparate set of businesses were viewed as a negative, but more recently the company has done a better job of explaining how all these pieces fit together, and more importantly the results have proven this out,” Bank of Nova Scotia research analyst Meny Grauman wrote in a note this week.
Now, the company’s two core U.S. businesses – Texas-based iA American-Amicable Group, which sells individual life insurance, and its U.S. auto-dealer services – are expected to make the most significant contribution to iA’s new profit goals. About a quarter of the overall return-on-equity increase is expected to come from these operations.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats against Canada have little impact on that strategy, Mr. Ricard added.
“We are shareholders of U.S. companies. It is managed by U.S. citizens for U.S. citizens,” he said. “We don’t export goods in the U.S. and what we do in Canada is in Canada.”
Last year, iA Financial expanded its U.S. life-insurance footprint with the US$170-million purchase of Vericity Inc. Shortly after, iA bought 115,000 insurance policies from Prosperity Life Group.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
For some businesses, such as auto-dealer services, a sales slowdown might make things more challenging, Mr. Ricard said. But the overall impact on the company would be small.
Last year, iA Financial expanded its U.S. life-insurance footprint with the US$170-million purchase of Vericity Inc., an insurance carrier with a direct-to-consumer digital platform. Shortly after, iA bought 115,000 insurance policies from Prosperity Life Group. The deal included two blocks of business in the “final expense” market (coverage for funeral costs) and added more than US$100-million in annual premiums.
But Mr. Ricard and his team are optimistic there is more runway in the U.S., particularly in the underserved Hispanic community, and in the extended auto-warranty market, selling policies that prolong warranty coverage for vehicle parts or repairs. The company entered that market at the start of the pandemic, when U.S. vehicle sales fell substantially, while inflation and claims costs were both rising.
“Interest rates went up, consumers’ ability to buy products in the business office was squeezed,” iA’s head of U.S. operations, Sean O’Brien, told investors at the Toronto event. “So it was a bit of a tough time.”
Mr. O’Brien said the company is now ready to push ahead with acquisitions and is looking at all new- and used-car buyers in the U.S.
In Canada, iA Wealth represents about 15 per cent of the parent company’s profit. It has become the country’s largest independent wealth-management firm with more than 2,500 independent advisers managing more than $153-billion for 500,000 clients.
Last April, Laurentian Bank of Canada sold its retail brokerage business to iA for an undisclosed amount. The deal gave iA about $2-billion of assets under administration and 16,000 clients.
But the wealth arm has also been busy recruiting new individual advisers, aiming for 8-per-cent annual growth in assets under administration. In 2024, iA Wealth attracted nearly $6-billion in new money from new advisers.
“This offering has been extremely successful for us over the last few years as we’ve been able to recruit bank advisers, because they were looking for that freedom to operate and manage their business their way,” iA executive vice-president of wealth management Stephan Bourbonnais said during this week’s investor presentation.
Asked if iA Wealth considers Canada’s big five banks as its main competition, Mr. Ricard was quick to say “no.”
“The banks have a different business model,” he said. “They attract people that are not necessarily an entrepreneur. We are very focused on recruiting and attracting advisers that are more entrepreneurs and more independent. What you don’t see is how many times we say no to some people because they are just not the right fit.”