Sun Life Financial Canada has realigned its retail business, prompting major reshuffling.

Léo Grépin, Senior Vice-President, Individual Insurance and Wealth (Individual), and Rocco Taglioni, President, Distribution, announced these changes to the Sun Life sales force in early June. The Insurance and Investment Journal obtained the notice that summarizes these changes.

Two key businesses

The two executives confirm that this realignment reflects the insurer’s “unwavering focus on clients and advisors. We will be improving the ‘end to end’ alignment of our manufacturing within our two key businesses (Insurance and Wealth) and creating more direct engagement and capability across the various functional elements found in these business lines. Bringing product and sales together and aligning operational areas to these businesses will enable us to move more quickly and effectively going forward,” the notice explains.

Sun Life will combine its insurance-based manufacturing product and solutions and insurance wholesaling sales under the leadership of Vineet Kochhar. “This enables clear accountability for our insurance business to accelerate our client and advisor responsiveness in the insurance space,” Grépin and Taglioni stated.

Stéphane Vigneault will join Kochhar’s team to provide a strong advisor and client experience focus to Insurance Solutions. His new title will be Vice President, Insurance Distribution, Wholesale.

The other members of Kochhar’s team are Dean Chambers, Vice President, Individual Insurance, Joe Pham, Assistant Vice President, Variable Annuity Product Management, Patricia Michon, Assistant Vice President, Guaranteed Wealth Product Management, Carlos Correia, Assistant Vice President, Business Management Projects, and Annalee Moore, Assistant Vice President, Business Management Distribution Services.

Wealth Wholesaling sales will now be led by Rick Headrick. “This strategic realignment will allow Sun Life Financial to continue to grow our wealth business across all streams, while strengthening the ability to innovate and deliver a powerful and comprehensive set of wealth solutions,” Grépin and Taglioni added.

Wealth management

Michael Banham will join Headrick’s team as Vice President, Wealth Distribution. The other team members are Sadiq Adatia, Chief Investment Officer, Sun Life Global Investments, Lori Landry, Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Institutional Business, Sun Life Global Investments, Oricia Smith, Vice President, International Investment Centre, and Paul Sergi, Assistant Vice President, Finance.

“Rocco Taglioni will continue to lead our distribution company, Sun Life Financial Distributors (Canada) Inc., and our dealer, Sun Life Financial Investment Services (Canada) Inc. He will also continue to lead the development and implementation of our retail distribution strategy in Canada,” the insurer says.