Craig Gilchrist was named senior vice president, head of ScotiaMcLeod Inc., a division of Toronto-based Bank of Nova Scotia, on Monday. Gilchrist had been leading the bank brokerage on an interim basis since May 2019, when Rob Djurfeldt stepped down from the position.
Gilchrist has been with Scotiabank for more than ten years. In 2017, he was named chief investment officer of Scotia Wealth Management; that role is now held by Andy Nasr. From 2009 to 2017, Gilchrist was managing director and co-head of global equity sales and trading with the bank.
Prior to joining Scotiabank, Gilchrist worked at the Bank of Montreal, Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs.
In November, Scotia will officially launch a fourth business line, Global Wealth Management, a move the bank announced earlier this year. It will be led by Glen Gowland, executive vice president of global wealth management.
Earlier this month, Djurfeldt joined Winnipeg-based Wellington-Altus Private Wealth Inc. as executive vice president and senior investment advisor.
ScotiaMcLeod made a big comeback in Investment Executive‘s 2019 Brokerage Report Card. Advisors there rated their firm significantly higher this year (by half a point or more) in all 33 main survey categories, with the majority of participants pointing to executives being open to hearing about advisors’ challenges and ideas, and to an overall improvement in corporate culture.
ScotiaMcLeod’s IE rating (the average of all of a firm’s category ratings) hit 8.2 this year, up from 6.9 in 2018, following several years of decline in advisor satisfaction across multiple areas of the business. For example, in the 2018 Report Card, ScotiaMcLeod advisors’ rating for “firm’s receptiveness to advisor feedback” had dropped by half a point or more for the third consecutive year, to 5.8 from 6.4 in 2017, 7.4 in 2016 and 7.9 in 2015.