Brand Profile
January 20, 2006
http://www.brandchannel.com/features_profile.asp?pr_id=268

RBC Dexia — Freshly Minted

What happens when a legacy Canadian financial services brand teams up with an ambitious European investor services company to create a new investor services brand?
 

The answer is RBC Dexia Investor Services. Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and Dexia have very recently married off their institutional investor services businesses to offer clients a "fresh perspective on investment services."

An equally owned joint venture, RBC Dexia Investor Services runs the gamut of investor services including global custody, fund and pension administration, securities lending, shareholder services, analytics and other related services to institutional investors worldwide. As a result, RBC Dexia became one of the top ten global custodians with assets under custody of US $2.0 trillion (€1.7 trillion), 4.8 million shareholder accounts, and 3800 employees worldwide in 15 countries.

"RBC Dexia Investor Services joins two established and admired institutional investor services providers with different, but remarkably complementary strengths and geographic coverage," says José Placido, CEO of RBC Dexia. "In offering the market ‘the advantage of a fresh perspective,' we're emphasizing the energy and insight that's fuelled by the combined expertise of 3800 professionals whose experience spans 15 countries on four continents."

The parent companies are certainly a stealthy lot. A Canadian legacy brand aiming to be all things to all people, RBC serves more than 14 million personal, business, and public sector clients through offices in North America, and some 30 countries around the world.

Together they offer a basic garden-variety of financial service products including mortgages and deposits, a full-service brokerage operation, and a mutual funds provider. As the largest Canadian bank-owned insurer, they also offer travel insurance, creditor products, and individual disability insurance. Through their venture into corporate and investment banking, they are considered the top-ranked securities underwriter and a leading mergers and acquisitions advisor in Canada.

With the legacy as the biggest and best bank in Canada, RBC aims to serve as an anchor to both institutional investors and businesses, with trust, service, partnership, and integrity as the key words du monde. With an ambitious eye toward expanding its global service offerings, it would be only natural that RBC seeks to grow its investment services area by partnering with a respected brand that has a strong European foothold.

Enter Dexia. Founded in Luxembourg in 1856, Dexia is also a legacy brand (Dexia Banque Internationale à Luxembourg [Dexia BIL]) with strong roots in retail banking, especially in its home countries, Belgium and Luxembourg. It acquired Artesia in 2001 to build on those competences and activities, notably in asset management and insurance services.

This marriage of Canadian and European brand royalty aims to successfully leverage both heritage brands, which in turn will give the new brand a lot of service power. "We can truly say to clients ‘we're intimate with your market,' explains Placido. "When you merge this geographic scope with the range of our product offering and the quality of personal service for which we're recognized, it's a unique proposition."

From a messaging perspective, RBC Dexia RBC Dexia Investor Services maintains a position of accountability but aims for more of a modern, progressive edge.

"Our new brand incorporates the names ‘RBC' and ‘Dexia,' leveraging the strength and reputation of our parent companies," says Placido. "At the same time, RBC Dexia Investor Services is a new force in investor services that will come to be associated with its own fresh and dynamic visual identity. Our commitment to clients is ‘speed combined with scope,' offering products that rival those of our largest competitors, but are delivered with speed, flexibility, and client focus. Visually, this is reflected through various elements suggesting motion, innovation and sophistication—all attributes we intend to reflect as a business."

When asked what he anticipates RBC Dexia Investor Services will mean to investors in the next five years, Placido says he thinks the brand's inherited reputation will continue to play a behind-the-scenes role in supporting RBC Dexia's more dynamic persona.

"We aim to sustain and build on the service standards that have propelled both partners to top rankings in industry surveys. Unlike many of our competitors, we also have a financial commitment from our parents to ongoing investment in the institutional investor services market, allowing us to constantly expand our services in line with the global aspirations of our clients," concludes Placido.

"In five years, we hope that RBC Dexia will have earned the right to be recognized as a compelling choice for clients whose objectives range from prosperity at home to expansion abroad, opening up new opportunities and delivering products that consistently improve their performance and support their strategies. In other words, we mean to be here for the long term."

RBC Dexia Investor Services is a client of Interbrand Corporation, brandchannel's parent company.

Vivian Manning-Schaffel is a freelance writer who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

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