Director & Head, Canadian Wealth Operations Excellence

Requisition ID: 273765 

Join a purpose driven winning team, committed to results, in an inclusive and high-performing culture.

The Director & Head, Canadian Wealth Operations Excellence is accountable for defining, advancing, and sustaining the enterprise operating model for Canadian Wealth Management Operations (CWMO), ensuring the organization delivers scalable, resilient, risk-aligned, and client-centric operational support across Canadian Wealth Management. This role is accountable for leading large-scale Operations teams across all supported business lines, ensuring consistent delivery of onboarding, account maintenance, transfers, registered products, mutual fund operations, client servicing, reporting, and billing, and operational support functions.

This role provides executive leadership across CWMO’s operational excellence agenda, including operating model design, process standardization, quality management, operational resilience, business continuity, incident management, transformation enablement, and continuous improvement. This role partners with senior business, technology, risk, compliance, internal controls, and operations leaders to ensure CWMO is positioned to support business growth, regulatory expectations, advisor effectiveness, and superior client outcomes.

The Director & Head, Canadian Wealth Operations Excellence is responsible for shaping the multi-year operational strategy and transformation, translating enterprise priorities into executable roadmaps, and ensuring CWMO operates with disciplined governance, clear accountabilities, and measurable performance standards. This role helps foster a culture of innovation and continuous improvement, partnering with key stakeholders to build best-in-class operational delivery that supports long-term business growth and client satisfaction.

Is this role right for you? In this role you will:

• Define and lead the future-state operating model required to support business growth, evolving advisor and client expectations, regulatory change, product expansion, and enterprise transformation priorities.
• Lead enterprise-wide standardization of operational practices, procedures, governance, controls, service standards, and performance metrics.
• Support execution of modernizing operations, driving scalable change across in-scope teams & manage resources & budgets, and enabling cross-functional collaboration to support transformation goals and remove execution barriers.
• Be accountable for operational productivity, expense management, and effective allocation of resources to deliver sustainable business and client outcomes.
  Ensure operating model decisions are aligned with GWM strategy, Bank risk appetite, client experience ambitions, advisor enablement objectives, and operational scalability.
• Lead workforce and capacity planning across CWMO, ensuring resources, operating capacity, and organization design remain aligned to business growth, client needs, productivity objectives, and strategic priorities.
• Partner with senior executives across business lines and enterprise functions to influence priorities, resolve cross-functional dependencies and drive adoption of consistent operating practices.
• Lead the adoption of advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, and digital capabilities to enhance operational effectiveness, decision-making, risk management, and client service outcomes.
• Own the multi-year CWMO operational excellence roadmap, including transformation initiatives that simplify processes, reduce friction, strengthen controls, improve productivity, and enhance service outcomes.
• Champion operational modernization through data, workflow automation, technology enablement, digitization, and process redesign. Advance the use of data-driven insights to monitor performance, identify trends, manage capacity, track SLAs, measure client outcomes, and support executive decision-making.
• Oversee governance of strategic initiatives, ensuring clear business cases, benefits realization, delivery discipline, change management, and stakeholder alignment.
• Drive a culture of continuous improvement across CWMO by embedding performance insights, root-cause analysis, service metrics, quality reviews, and operational feedback loops.
• Provide executive oversight of operational risk management, business controls, quality assurance, incident management, business continuity, and operational resilience across CWMO.
• Ensure CWMO operates within the Bank’s risk appetite and in alignment with applicable regulatory, compliance, AML, sanctions, conduct risk, and internal control expectations.
• Oversee governance of key third-party service providers and strategic partners supporting CWMO, ensuring performance, risk management, contractual obligations, and service expectations are achieved. 
• Lead response and remediation for operational reviews, audit findings, regulatory changes, policy updates, and control enhancement requirements.
• Coordinate cross-functional response efforts during major disruptions, ensuring timely communication and recovery.
• Prepare and deliver executive-level reporting on operational performance, risk indicators, resilience readiness, transformation progress, and strategic initiatives to senior leadership committees and governance forums.
• Lead a high-performing, multi-disciplinary team across quality management, operational resilience, business continuity, change, incident management, sustainability, and strategic initiatives.
• Build leadership depth through succession planning, coaching, performance management, and development of strong internal talent.
• Foster an inclusive, accountable, and client-focused culture aligned to Scotiabank values, conduct expectations, and Global Sales Principles.
• Create an environment where teams are empowered to challenge the status quo, solve enterprise problems, improve service outcomes, and deliver sustainable change.
• Act as a trusted advisor to executive stakeholders on operational strategy, transformation priorities, resilience, governance, and risk management.
• Drive enterprise-wide collaboration and alignment across business lines and functional partners to deliver sustainable business outcomes.

Do you have the skills that will enable you to succeed in this role? – We’d love to work with you if you have:

• University degree in Commerce, Finance, or related sector  
• 10+ yrs of progressive leadership experience in the financial sector, Asset Management and Wealth Management experience is an asset
• Demonstrated success leading enterprise-scale operating model design, operational transformation, process optimization, and change management initiatives
• Deep understanding of wealth management operations, regulatory requirements, operational risk management, governance frameworks, and client service models
• Strong executive presence with proven ability to influence senior leadership and drive outcomes within complex matrix organizations
• The ability to build and sustain a culture of accountability, innovation, operational discipline, and continuous improvement
• The ability to lead strategic workforce planning, succession management, leadership development, and organizational capability enhancement

Location(s):  Canada : Ontario : Toronto 

Scotiabank is a leading bank in the Americas. Guided by our purpose: "for every future", we help our customers, their families and their communities achieve success through a broad range of advice, products and services, including personal and commercial banking, wealth management and private banking, corporate and investment banking, and capital markets.  

At Scotiabank, we value the unique skills and experiences each individual brings to the Bank, and are committed to creating and maintaining an inclusive and accessible environment for everyone. If you require accommodation (including, but not limited to, an accessible interview site, alternate format documents, ASL Interpreter, or Assistive Technology) during the recruitment and selection process, please let our  Recruitment team know. If you require technical assistance, please click here. Candidates must apply directly online to be considered for this role. We thank all applicants for their interest in a career at Scotiabank; however, only those candidates who are selected for an interview will be contacted.