Canada's sixth-largest bank is looking to expand its presence across the Great White North, adding retail branches outside of Quebec and Ontario, provinces where it is currently well-established. The National Bank of Canada plans to add 40 to 50 client-facing positions outside of Quebec in the next two years to staff the new branches.
The positions will primarily be for financial advisors and commercial account managers. It also plans to expand its wealth management operations outside of Quebec, in an attempt to generate greater revenue from the division within the next two years.
The bank will be both building branches and looking to add small lenders (think credit unions) in "clusters" of eight to 10 branches, to expand in areas where there are currently only a few branches at all.
Since 2008, the bank has added 300 client-facing employees in Quebec and plans to relocate or refurbish 60 bank branches throughout Canada during the remainder of 2010 and 2011. The bank revamped 24 banks in 2010, according to bank spokesman Claude Breton.