According to this recent study published by the city of London, Vancouver is among the top 25 in the world when it comes to financial centres. This at first came as a bit of shock, especially since we were rated number 7 in North America, ahead of Montreal. However, when you investigate further I can see the merit in that ranking.
Firstly, Vancouver has been designated as an international finance centre in Canada with incentives designed to attract international finance activity. Now many will jump at this and say that Calgary and dominant player in the west when it comes to business. That is true, thank you NDP in the 90’s for precipitating that by the way, but we are talking financial centres here, two different, yet in many minds perhaps similar things.
Secondly, Vancouver is not home to the headquarters of our nations banks, that title goes to Toronto, however, most of them have a huge presence in Vancouver. Furthermore, Vancouver has the head office for Canada of one of the world’s biggest banks, HSBC. Vancouver is also home to Canada’s largest independent investment bank, Cannacord . Vancouver is also a major player in the wealth management sector and many credit unions are headquartered here.
You can see that the financial sector is thriving and only going to get bigger in Vancouver as it’s importance grows in the coming decades as an Asian Pacific gateway city.
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