All right, thank you again, and we're gonna continue on now with President and CEO for now.
For now.
Not for much longer of IGM Financial, James O'Sullivan. James, thanks for joining us at the National Bank Conference.
Well, thank you Jaeme. It's a pleasure to be here, and [Non-English content]
I won't try to copy that. My French is not as good as that, I'll tell ya. 2025, very strong year for IGM. Improving flows across the platform. Maybe just summarize what was accomplished in 2025, and then how that positions IGM moving into 2026.
Sure. I mean, it was a great year. Now, look, I think humility is important in this business. I'll be the first to acknowledge that we are, as you know, a markets-sensitive business, and markets were great. Having said that, you know, IG and Mackenzie together generated almost CAD 9 billion in net flows. Very, very strong. If I think about our strategic investments, Jaeme, you know, Rockefeller client assets up 34%. Wealthsimple client assets up 75%. ChinaAMC up almost 30%. Northleaf had, you know, CAD 35 billion in assets now in their best fundraising year, I think ever, almost CAD 6 billion. There really was strength across the board, and I think that allowed us to really deliver for our shareholders. You know, record earnings up 17%.
We were in a position to increase the dividend by 10%, the first dividend increase in 11 years. You know, thematically we're kind of in a moment here, or more than a moment, where we're returning capital to shareholders. We returned in excess of CAD 800 million to shareholders last year through the buyback and the dividend. The dividend's up, the buyback's up, and we're, you know, we're targeting kind of CAD 1.1 billion of capital to shareholders this year. 2025 was a great year. I think overall, I think it's fair to say the business has been firing on all cylinders.
I think, you know, thanks in part to your help and the help of others, the business is, and its component pieces, are better understood than they were several years ago. You know, we continue to have two types of shareholders, those who value us on a P/E basis, and those who value us on a sum-of-the-parts basis. I say to those who value us on a P/E basis, I say, "You know, you're not getting any earnings yet from Wealthsimple and not much from Rockefeller. So whatever multiple you think is right for this business, take into account that there will be, at some point, not only earnings, but accelerating earnings from Wealthsimple and Rockefeller." For those who value us on the sum-of-the-parts basis, we disclosed last quarter our stab at net asset value.
You know, Jaeme, folks like you will have a very informed view as well. Regardless of how you look at it, I think the stock is starting to work, and we're trading better, but there's still a lot of embedded value in IGM.
Yeah. Agreed. Mentioned at the top, you'll be moving on to the Power Corporation role shortly. Damon Murchison taking over. I think the answer's pretty simple, but wouldn't expect any shift in strategic priorities or capital allocation priorities with Damon coming in the short term here.
No. I mean, I can't think of a succession announcement that has continuity more kind of embedded in it. I mean, if you think about it, you know, Damon is CEO of IG Wealth today. He'll be CEO of IG Wealth tomorrow, and he'll pick up the IGM CEO position as well. Damon's not leaving IG Wealth. I'm not leaving IGM. I will be Board Chair at IGM. Jeff is not leaving Power. Jeff will be Vice Chair at Power. You know, people are changing chairs and changing roles, but I think there's a remarkable amount of continuity implicit in that very structure. The theme is continuity. It's maintaining momentum. You should not expect, you know, any sharp turns left or right.
Obviously, in the fullness of time, Damon will bring himself to the IGM job, and I will bring myself to the Power Corp job. I really think the theme is continuity. Things have been going well the last few years, and quite frankly, we just need to continue executing on existing strategies.
Yeah. As you move to Power and in Montreal, do you think you'll be a Canadiens fan?
Well, there's only one answer to that question.
We can save that for offline, I guess. Let's talk about AI and digital platforms and those capabilities as they continue to evolve in the advice channels. We'll start with the IG Wealth side of it. How do you see the role of, you know, say, human advisors changing? Maybe a focus on the high-net-worth segment, given that's where IG has really driven a lot of their growth recently.
Well, you know, I think Jeff captured a fair bit of this earlier. There's no question that there is both an efficiency play and a real opportunity to really help the advisor do an even better job. I suppose, Jaeme, my principal message on AI today is I wanna make a bit of an analogy back to kind of fintech. You know, fintech has been with us now for 10 or 15 years, and think about how the group, the Power Corp group, responded to the fintech opportunity, okay? We decided we were going to invest in fintech, which we did. We decided we were gonna partner with fintech, and we did. I think IGM in many ways is a perfect example of that, Jaeme, because look at what we've done. We've got the largest shareholding in Wealthsimple.
We were a shareholder in Personal Capital and made a lot of money on that on the way through. We have an important commercial partnership with Conquest Planning, with Nesto in mortgages, with ClearEstate in estates and wills, and we're building something now called PolicyBook in the insurance area. The group recognized, you know, kind of 12 years ago or so that kinda fintech was coming at this industry. They said, I wasn't here at the time. They said, "How do we confront this kind of what I would describe as the historical challenge of incumbencies?" Kinda legacy companies, 50 to 100 years old. They often don't see change coming, and they often react to change too late. That did not happen in our case. It did not happen because we invested.
It did not happen because we partnered. I think what we've really done over the past 10 or 12 years is bring our cultures and our executives closer and closer to fintech. We're gonna do the exact same in AI. That work has started. We're gonna invest, we're gonna partner, we're gonna shift our cultures. Again, to solve for that problem of incumbency, we're gonna acknowledge up front that we can't do it all ourselves, okay? We won't. You should, Jim, my message is you should expect an announcement or two out of us in the coming months and, you know, with respect to AI.
I have said to our board, quoting an old management consultant that we used to do in a previous job, this fellow used to say, "James, are you serious or are you just interested?" I always liked that expression. I guess my message is this room should know that IGM and the group and all of the companies are serious about AI and not just interested for the very reason you're getting at, which is there's a remarkable opportunity in front of us to do better for clients, to do better for advisors, to create kind of efficiencies. How that economic pie, which we know is large, gets kind of divvied up is to be determined. Suppliers will take some. You know, clients deserve some. Advisors deserves some. Our shareholders deserve some.
We're at it with purpose. There'll be more to say on that in the coming months. It is easily you know, back to the previous question. I've shared with my board, Jim, that kind of over the last five or six years, we think we've done a few things. Number one was we landed planes. There were a whole bunch of big tech projects underway when several of us arrived. We landed all of those planes. Number two is we rearchitected the business for growth and diversification. That's the strategic investments. Number three was we kind of executed in the core. I think we did a decent job of communicating through Investor Day and otherwise. The next theme, the fourth theme, which will be Damon's first theme, is AI. This is real. This is serious. The investment is underway.
Okay. Do you see any areas that are gonna be difficult for AI to replicate, that you know, either in IG Wealth or in the Mackenzie side?
I think the most difficult thing for AI to replicate is what Damon describes as emotional advice. I say, "You know, Damon, what do you mean by that?" Then he'll, you know, share a story or two, and I've been through it myself in my career where, you know, let's say the markets have a really bad Friday. This has happened in our careers a half dozen times, right? Then over the weekend, things only get worse. There's a pile of selling on Monday morning. Tuesday's no better. Tuesday afternoon, you call your advisor and say, "You know, maybe we should lighten up." That's where an advisor really adds value. That's where an advisor reminds you of what the plan is, why you're in the market.
You know, I listened to an audio version of some of Larry Fink's letter yesterday, and I'm gonna get half of this wrong, but he reminded us once again that over 10 years, if you were you know, the S&P 500 did whatever it did, but if you missed 10 days, you missed half the returns. Part of what an advisor does is emotional advice. It's discipline. It's encouragement. That stuff is not easily replicated. At least it wouldn't be easily replicated for me because I you know. Other parts of it, there's absolutely no question AI will meaningfully enhance the offering. A good example of that is Mackenzie right now in Boston, our global quant equity team led by Arup Datta.
About CAD 20 billion in assets, 11 people, 20+ mandates, and it's a quant shop. They've got LLMs and machine learning, and they're ingesting enormous amounts of data overnight and through the course of the day. The machine runs twice a day. After the machine runs, the team meets. They don't just do what the machine says. They kinda sit down, and they decide kinda which of the trades they're gonna do. I think that boutique, by the way, has green across the screen in terms of alpha. I think that's a really good example of how AI is going to enhance, significantly enhance investment offerings. You know, quant was never a thing in retail, like, until very recently. Quant always had great breadth, but it never had great depth.
I think what AI is doing is giving it the depth now. You've got breadth and depth, and suddenly quant is a very interesting thing in retail. There's a very good example of how, you know, AI is going to enhance what our, you know, our portfolio managers do. You know, we'll see. I'm quite excited by it. We've got a senior leaders off-site coming up. The theme of it is relevance in the age of intelligence, James. The intelligence refers to both artificial intelligence and human intelligence. We're gonna confront exactly these questions about what the ideal marriage of the two kinda looks like, and how through that we can deliver a better advisor experience and client experience.
Okay, great. That's it's a good amount of detail on that topic for now, and we'll look for Damon's updates in a few months here. Let's shift to the flows. Industry flows obviously improved in 2025. Do you see the drivers of that improvement in 2025 continuing here in 2026? What's your take on where industry flows are going this year?
You know, I think flows in 2025 were probably better than we expected, you know, kinda coming out of 2024. I was sharing with Marco earlier that, you know, I think there's a couple of things behind that. You know, if we roll back the clock, we were all worried about kind of persistently high inflation. We were all worried about rates settling at a high level that would make mortgage renewals very difficult. I think, you know, the governor has made it clear that inflation, absent what's going on right now, inflation has settled more or less at 2%, which is, you know, which is very good.
Rates have probably settled at a bit of a lower level than we feared, say, a couple of years ago, which is why, you know, TD produced a report a few weeks ago saying, "You know, so far so good on the mortgage renewals." I think that's right. That would be our experience as well. I think inflation has been a factor. I think rates have been a factor. You know, I guess two other things. One would be wage growth. Wage growth has been real, it's been persistent, and that kinda matters, right? I think wage growth is an important component of it as well. I think Canadians are making kind of intelligent choices. Their you know, retirement readiness isn't just kind of a concept.
It's a pressing need. Retirement readiness is Canadians' number one concern, and I think Canadians are making choices on where they spend their disposable income. 2025 was very strong, as I said, with CAD 8.8 billion in flows out of IG and Mackenzie on a net basis. Yeah, we still have low inflation rates, I mean, everything's wobbly today. I mean, like, I think the prospect of rates lower than where we feared they would be a couple of years ago remains very real. Wage growth continues, and I think Canadians are very committed to kind of being ready for retirement. I think the backdrop is, I don't wanna pretend it's great. I mean, it's not knock-your-socks-off kind of flows. There's real growth in flows. So I think the industry's absolutely participating in that and should continue to.
Okay. At IG Wealth, the high net worth segment is what's driving the bulk of that success in net flow. You know, maybe talk about what's worked and then what's gonna continue to sustain that level of success.
It's interesting, you know, that shift in strategy was part of embracing the potential of fintech, right? Because we looked at fintech and we said, "Well, where might it have the greatest impact?" You start with mass market, right? Then you move up mass affluent and up to high net worth. Look, we weren't genius on this. Everyone has concluded this, that the, you know, where you can add the most value as a human advisor almost certainly is with clients that have large and complex financial needs.
That you know, as we embraced fintech, we said, "Let's move IG upmarket from mass market, mass affluent, to kind of mass affluent, high net worth." We report on that quarterly, and I think the progress has been incredibly steady. I think Damon's big contribution over the past five or six years has been to create this kind of flywheel of wealth solutions that surround the advisor now. I mentioned some of them, Conquest Financial Planning, you know, which has AI and will have more AI embedded in it. ClearEstate on wills and estates. Tax insight that we're now providing in partnership with an accountancy. And philanthropic services, including philanthropic advice.
Like, I think what's really made all of this possible is building that flywheel of kind of services that the advisors can now kind of plug and play. We've got an enormous team of very sophisticated, you know, our advanced financial planning team, right across the country, of tax experts, estate experts ready to assist advisors and high net worth clients. That's, you know, working very, very well.
The other thing Damon did very well was he said, "You know, if we're gonna do this, we need to segment the client base, and we need to have a bit of a different offering for mass market versus mass affluent and high net worth and create the space, the time and the day for advisors to recruit new high net worth clients and serve high net worth clients." That's a work in progress, but that's going on. That's going very well. The business truly has been kind of retooled. Not under my watch. You know, my predecessor, Jeffrey Carney , did a brilliant job. This started kind of 10+ years ago, and it's a different business, it's a different platform, and it is specifically succeeding against the high net worth segment, James.
Yeah. Great. Let's shift to Mackenzie. Same sort of question. Where net flows at Mackenzie have been positive for, I think, eight or nine months now in a row, and that gap to the industry net flows rate has narrowed to almost in line. You know, what drove that, and then what's going to push Mackenzie's net flows maybe even above the industry net average?
You know, what drove it in the wrong direction initially was a particular boutique that had done so well for so long, but you know, as these things go, stopped doing well and so went into redemptions. That was unfortunate. What became very clear as we stood up and focused more and more effort on other boutiques is that we could and did turn the corner. Yeah, I declared to my board early last year that Mackenzie has turned the corner, and as they turn the corner, they're gonna gain momentum, and they're gonna come into the stretch here real kinda strong. That's exactly what's going on. It's institutional, led by Global Quantitative Equity out of Boston.
It's retail, led by funds, but increasingly by active ETFs. When you look at kind of which boutiques, and there are 16 boutiques in total. When you look at which boutiques are succeeding, I think there's enough of them succeeding, and you're never gonna have all of them kind of succeeding at the same time, right? Otherwise you wouldn't have 16 boutiques. You have different styles and they find favor at different times. But I think that momentum absolutely will continue, and that combination of I think a decent backdrop, assuming this war is resolved sometime soon.
I think the combination of the decent backdrop and Mackenzie, you know, underlying momentum in Mackenzie sets Mackenzie up for another good year. James, as you know very well, like, the math of this industry isn't that complicated. Like, if your opening assets on January 1st are a lot higher than the average assets from the previous year, that's a brilliant setup, right? You know, you just have to. You know, you don't have to do a lot to generate good earnings growth. That's the setup. It's not just us. That's the setup that the industry has this year. It is. I must say that if I look at, we track kind of five-day trailing average client assets versus plan.
Right up to March 13th, actual client assets were well ahead of plan for this year, and we planned for growth. Now things obviously changed, you know, March 13th because of the market volatility. I think the setup's pretty good. I think the setup overall is pretty good for this year.
Good. Maybe go on to the strategic investments. Wealthsimple, Rockefeller, ChinaAMC, Northleaf. Maybe this is a bit too broad for the time we have here, but how should we think about, you know, IGM's role in the long-term value creation that these businesses are generating?
Yeah. I would just emphasize, we now have the businesses we want. Okay, we're done. Okay? I won't say forever because the phone rings and you answer it. If five years out we had the same six businesses that we had today, I think we would be very happy. We might want to own a bit more of some, but I think that's, you know, that's probably what it looks like. These investments are strategic. By that, we mean they're long-term. They're not financial. We're not sellers. What we really try to emphasize internally is what we call the horizontal connectivity. How do we get Wealthsimple to work with Mackenzie? How do we get ChinaAMC to work with Mackenzie? How do we get IG to work with Rockefeller?
We don't have the time, but I, for each of those kind of, you know, intersections, I could give you examples of where these businesses are working together and working well. Each of those businesses has, you know, remarkably strong leadership. Mike Katchen, you know. Greg Fleming, Yimei Li, Stuart Waugh. You know, so, you know, we are. Horizontal connectivity is important to us, but we kind of show up through governance, through the board, principally, and then through kind of commercial partnerships and business that we do together. Those companies, you know, standing on their own are remarkably strong and remarkably well-led.
Right. Maybe with the last minute here, the stock's done well over the last year, so maybe there isn't necessarily anything to highlight. Maybe there is. Is there a business or a part of the story that doesn't get enough focus that you'd like to highlight and maybe investors aren't just paying enough attention to?
Yeah, I mean, it's a good question because it depends on when you ask the question. You know, Wealthsimple got a lot of attention at the end of last year as they announced a big equity offering with a CAD 10 billion valuation associated with it. Rockefeller got a lot of attention at the end of last year because they announced a big equity and debt recap that resulted in us doubling our value over 2.5 years. ChinaAMC hasn't had a lot of attention recently, so that might be the one, but my view on that remains just extremely kind of intact, if I can say that.
Like, the second-largest economy, the second-largest capital market, that's long term is absolutely a grower when you consider some of the structural reforms underway in China to encourage retirement savings and when you consider where just where they are in the evolution of the mutual fund and ETF business overall. Northleaf is small, but incredibly kind of strong and doing well, but it's just not large enough to really move the needle overall. I don't know that there's one that stands out. I mean, I really think it's you've got six businesses. Look at it on a sum-of-the-parts basis or on a P/E basis. If you do the latter, take into account that you don't have earnings from Wealthsimple yet and no meaningful earnings from Rockefeller, but you will.
It's just that they're in that kind of high growth phase on that particular part of the curve. I think there's lots of good growth ahead, and I'm very excited for Damon Murchison and the team. I think they're gonna do great and take this thing to new heights.
Excellent. Well, that's our time, James. Thanks and best of luck with the Power Corp.
Thank you.
We'll be seeing you here again. Just a different background, I guess.
Okay. Thank you for your support.