Credit Suisse is providing private banking for clients in Toronto, Canada, to tap into the market for wealthy individuals there, a report says. Separately, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce has, according to Bloomberg, said it would consider spending as much as C$2 billion on wealth-management takeovers. The report cited incoming chief executive Victor Dodig. CIBC is Canada's fifth-biggest bank.

In the case of Credit Suisse, the Zurich-listed bank, which has a significant presence in the US, has dedicated four advisors to target Canadians with at least $25 million of assets to invest. It is “bringing what we think is a much-needed perspective to a relatively small group of ultra high-net-worth Canadians who, given their situation, really require a global wealth-management solution,” Ronald Lloyd, the bank’s country head for Canada, was quoted by Bloomberg as saying in an interview. A spokesperson for the bank confirmed the strategy to Family Wealth Report.

Canada has considerable potential, at least according to recent data. There are around 320,000 high net-worth individuals in Canada , a gain of 7.2 per cent on a year ago, according to the recent RBC/Capgemini World Wealth Report. That’s about 1 per cent of Canada’s population of 35 million. Their collective wealth is estimated at $979 billion. Meanwhile, Canadian banks such as RBC, while they haven't totally escaped the pressures of recent years post-2008, are generally seen as having dodged more of the pain than their southern counterparts.

“For the first time in my 25-year career, we’ve started seeing wealthy Canadians looking to bring their assets back to Canada,” Lloyd was quoted as saying. “That’s very significant.”

As far as the US is concerned, the news service said the bank has been “revamping its money-losing US unit” under Philip Vasan, who was appointed in March 2013 to oversee private banking for the Americas.

“We actually have made great progress and we’re in many ways ahead of plans and expectations,” Richard Jaffe, Credit Suisse’s head of private banking for North America, told the same news service. “Things are going well in North America and the US, and the Canadian strategy fits very nicely into our strategic growth plan.” Jaffe said the firm will add more people as required.

CIBC

In the case of CIBC, Dodig reportedly said: “I would say that the right size for us at this point in time would be up to C$2 billion.” He takes over as CEO when Gerald McCaughey retires Sept 15. He was quoted speaking at a conference in Toronto.

“We’ve been quite clear in that we’re most interested in the wealth-management space,” he said. The bank has said it seeks to boost earnings contribution from its wealth-management unit to 15 per cent from 11 per cent last year.

Elsewhere, the Canadian family office market is in some ways less developed than that of the US, but there are new entrants. Last year, this publication examined players such as Equilibrium Partners. See here.