Fidelity Clearing Canada (FCC) has landed a contract to provide securities clearing, real-time transaction processing and integrated risk management and operational tools to ITG Canada Corp., the Canadian unit of independent agency broker Investment Technology Group. This brings FCC’s list of clients up to seven Canadian broker-dealers, clearing about 260,000 trades per month on behalf […]
Sun Life Financial has teamed up once again with CI Investments to launch SunWise Essential Series, a new suite of seg funds. The launch of this line will also mark the beginning of the end for the existing SunWise Elite and SunWise Elite Plus products, which will be closed to new investors effective October 15, […]
Fears of a double-dip recession in the U.S. were reinforced on Friday, by a spate of negative economic reports. On Friday it was announced that the U.S. consumer price index rose just 0.3% in August, meeting expectations, but core CPI fell short of consensus estimates, gaining just 0.1%. On a year-over-year basis, total CPI gained […]
Wishing on a star might fill your clients with hope, but when it comes to debt reduction, its probably not going to do the trick. More than two-thirds of Canadians (69%) rank “debt-freedom” as one of their top financial goals, but nearly half feel they have lost ground in this regard, according to a national […]
It’s been a busy year for market regulators, despite a decline in the volume of complaints. Never mind enforcement action, the bigger job now is simply monitoring the vast quantity of market chatter, according to the annual report from the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization (IIROC). There were huge increases in the number of orders to […]
Despite the creation of nearly 36,000 new jobs, Canada’s unemployment rate rose to 8.1% in August, according to StatsCan. The net gain of 36,000 jobs may look good at first glance, but it includes the return of 68,000 education workers. The rise in unemployment stems from an increase in the number of people actually looking […]
Investment Planning Counsel (IPC) has struck a deal to acquire Partners In Planning Financial Group (PIP), pending regulatory approval. The deal includes all of PIP’s subsidiaries, including mutual fund and exempt market dealer Partners In Planning Financial Services Ltd. and its insurance agency, Partners In Planning Insurance Services Inc. “We had always been interested [in […]
You’ve probably heard it a thousand times: Canadian mutual fund fees are too high — just look to the U.S. for proof. But a new study finds that this nugget of conventional wisdom might be a complete fallacy. Comparisons of Canadian management expense ratios to U.S. total expense ratios are far too simplistic, according to […]
Advisors are coming under much more scrutiny lately as new services have been rolled out, giving the investing public access to detailed information about financial professionals. On Tuesday, the beta version of KYFA.com went live, promising users the ability “to search, connect, communicate and evaluate financial advisors.” On Aug. 30, the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization […]
The Bank of Canada is raising its target for the overnight rate by 25 basis points to 1%, despite what the bank calls an “uneven” economic recovery among advanced economies. “Economic activity in Canada was slightly softer in the second quarter than the Bank had expected, although consumption and investment have evolved largely as anticipated,” […]