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The Bank of Nova Scotia has created a new executive position to increase its focus on Quebec, a region where the Toronto-headquartered bank feels it needs “more boots on the ground to generate more business.”

The bank appointed Jean-François Courville as president, Quebec, as part of its “Grow Quebec” strategy.

“(Courville) will lead our Quebec-based executive leaders in identifying key business growth opportunities, leveraging established client relationships and building new relationships across the Quebec region,” Aris Bogdaneris, Scotiabank’s head of Canadian banking, said in a statement.

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At Scotiabank’s investor day in December, Bogdaneris told shareholders the bank plans to continue adding relationship managers to “geographic white spots” where it needs “more boots on the ground to generate new business. Quebec and British Columbia are a priority.”

Chief executive Scott Thomson, while addressing shareholders in April last year, said he wants to grow the lender’s presence in both Quebec and British Columbia, where “we are underpenetrated.”

The move also seems to fit with Scotiabank’s new strategy of allocating more capital in North America, something it first announced in December. Its immediate focus was to allocate a greater share of capital to Canada as well as recycle capital from its Latin American businesses to its corporate business in the United States.

Scotiabank has the largest international footprint amongst its Canadian peers, but its businesses in Latin America have too many clients using only one banking product, Thomson said in December.

In August, the lender agreed to buy 14.9 per cent of Cleveland-based KeyCorp for about $3.9 billion. On a conference call with investors in late August, Thomson described the investment as “a low-cost, low-risk way” of getting into an “uncertain” U.S. market.

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“(It) allows us to dip our toe in the water, learn about the market and actually get the benefits … from developed market earnings over time,” he said.

Courville will join the bank on Nov. 12 from Purpose Unlimited, a Canadian financial services and technology company where he is president and chief client officer. Previously, he held executive roles at Wealthsimple Inc. and RBC Wealth Management, and he led Manulife Asset Management globally as well as State Street Corp.’s Canadian business. 

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