Yvon Charest, president and CEO of Industrial Alliance Insurance and Financial Services addressed the Chambre de commerce et d’industrie du Québec métropolitain today.

The Chambre had named Industrial Alliance the visionary company of the year for 2001, and Charest took advantage of the occasion to discuss developments in the company, as well as to present his view of the financial services sector.

Two weeks before the new ownership regulations affecting federally chartered financial institution come into effect, and following the announcement of an agreement between Sun Life and Clarica to combine their operations, Charest warned against drawing hasty conclusions to the effect that medium-sized institutions would no longer be able to compete with large ones.

Charest explained that over the past few years it hasn’t been the major insurers that have been the most active in terms of acquisitions, but the mid-sized insurers. And even more interesting is that consolidation has not taken the form of mergers and acquisitions so much as it has taken the form of strategic agreements, favouring “piecemeal” agreements between institutions of all sizes.

This is one of the areas that Industrial Alliance has been pursuing over the past few years. “For example, we manufacture and administer TD Bank life insurance products and Laurentian Bank creditor insurance products. And just yesterday, we announced an important agreement with the National Bank, through which we will administer the group pension plans distributed by National Bank Trust,” Charest pointed out.

Charest doesn’t hide his preference for these strategic agreements, which allow companies of all sizes to increase their efficiency and their product line, over mega-mergers. “I believe that the consumer will benefit from much healthier competition if the market is made up of a large number of institutions, of varying sizes, each with their own strategies.”

With respect to ownership regulations, Charest pointed out that Industrial Alliance isn’t affected by changes being made to the federal legislation since it is a Quebec chartered company.