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There is no magic formula when it comes to being a leading employer, but the best all share one common trait – they seek feedback from employees and take action.
“If you’re not willing to put out the best package, you’re not going to attract the best people,” are the simple but insightful words of Cal Jungwirth, director of permanent placement service at recruitment firm Robert Half.
An emerging trend has been the end of the one-size-fits-all approach, as the best wealth management firms to work for in Canada treat all their people as individuals and cater to what they value.
Jungwirth says, “It could be something such as a health wellness spending account that gives you full autonomy to spend benefit dollars as you wish.”
The other significant evolving factor is how employers deal with work-life balance. It’s not as binary as offering remote work or not. Employers can be supportive of their teams by allowing them to adjust their hours around family commitments or tailor their systems to suit hybrid work.
According to Wealth Professional’s 2025 data, 46.37 percent of employee respondents work in a hybrid model but the number who would prefer to work this way is 8.78 percent higher.
The key is offering policies that make a workplace more appealing and, as a result, ensure firms attract the most talented workers.
“Quite a few organizations will offer matching gift programs for employee donations to not-for-profits and that is great, but for a lot of individuals, that’s not going to keep them at that company or attract them,” explains Jungwirth. “Another element that I’ve seen in some packages is a lot of companies are open to sabbaticals, but they’re unpaid. Again, that’s not that attractive to potential candidates.”
Wealth Professional’s Top Employers 2025 recognizes the best employers in Canada’s wealth management industry. Organizations participated by submitting information highlighting their practices and employees then completed anonymous forms evaluating their workplace. The firms that achieved an 80 percent or greater average employee satisfaction rating were named Top Employers.
A significant takeaway from the data is that the majority of respondent employees confirmed their employers haven’t asked them for their views. However, the winning cohort stood out for undertaking regular check-ins and feedback sessions, underlining the leading employers’ fundamental principles.
According to a 2025 report by Robert Half, just over half of Canadian finance and accounting leaders are looking to fill permanent positions at their firms as the demand for skilled finance and accounting professionals remains high, with an unemployment rate as low as 3.6 percent in the sector.
Analyzing all employee ratings in WP’s 2025 and 2024 data shows a high degree of commonality and also confirms Jungwirth’s view that sabbaticals are not highly valued.
Larger organizations tend to offer more comprehensive benefits and higher overall satisfaction, but smaller organizations can excel, especially in culture and flexibility.
Compensation and retirement benefits are common pain points, particularly in smaller firms.
Workplace culture, safety, and professional development are strong across the board.
Supportive and flexible environments to facilitate work-life balance are crucial for employees.
Headquarters: Calgary, AB
Number of employees: 501–1,000
Avenue Living, which functions as an asset manager/operator, firmly understands the environment it wishes to create.
“When you have happy employees, that’s how you really inspire them to bring their best to working with their peers and their colleagues, as well as bringing their best to our customers every day,” says Tammy Cho, Chief Communications and Marketing Officer.
Avenue Living is cognizant of current trends and crafts its policies to ensure everyone feels listened to and catered for through its total employee value proposition.
“It’s going to look slightly different for every candidate. For some, the emphasis on paid time off is going to be really important,” says chief people officer Charlotte Collett. “For others, it might be hard dollars. It’s testament to us as an organization that we try to look at creating baseline structures that give us some consistency, while at the same time, we need to be agile when it makes sense to do so.”
A standout pillar of the firm is offering a range of career development initiatives such as:
Women of Influence mentorship
Leadership program
Centre of Excellence
Supportive onboarding
Cho highlights the success of the Women of Influence Mentorship program.
“It is uniquely designed to ensure that there are highly inclusive and dynamic conversations with women, for women, and that they are helping them propel their careers.”
Women are paired with other women across the company, allowing them to learn from each other’s wisdom and personal journeys. The benefits are clear as women make up 50 percent of the executive team and hold key leadership roles across finance, legal, marketing, and communications.
The firm’s externally facilitated science-based leadership training program runs for 12 weeks and includes bi-weekly in-person group sessions, 360-degree peer feedback assessments, and one-on-one coaching.
Employees also have access to support for a wide range of professional designations, including the CFA, CPA, CAIA, and Executive MBA programs, as well as certifications tailored to the firm’s field teams.
Frequent employee check-ins are crucial to sustaining a happy and healthy work environment. As Collett explains, “We’re very much a believer in people can’t do things they don’t know anything about, whether it’s an employee getting that feedback, or the employee offering some feedback to their leader about what they might need in order to be successful in their roles. That two-way feedback loop is critical.”
The company has 75 percent of its employees out in the field and the remaining 25 percent are office-based, emphasizing the importance of in-person collaboration and connection, with adaptability considered on a case-by-case basis.
Cho explains, “We always found that being in office allows us to be more nimble in how we collaborate together on projects, on how we execute quickly, on how we adapt and pivot to anything that we need to.”
To boost togetherness, the Avenue Living Social Club was launched in late 2024 and has hosted numerous events, including pumpkin carving and gingerbread decorating contests, along with a monthly summer event with food trucks and lawn games.
Compensation structures are consistently benchmarked against the rest of the market as Avenue Living takes the view that compensation is a big element of the total employee value proposition.
“In respect of compensation and rewards specifically, we look at it from a holistic total rewards perspective,” adds Collett.
The other elements are incentive plans or bonus schemes, benefit structures, retirement and savings plans. With a mix of early-career and experienced staff, Avenue Living maintains the know-how of late-career employees, while also benefiting from the energy and tech savviness of the younger generation.
Keen to bolster sustainability and cater to the employees to whom incentives matter, the firm is a member of the UN-supported Principles for Responsible Investment and the Responsible Investment Association.
As part of these, Avenue Living undertakes a deep energy retrofitting program – in partnership with the Canadian Infrastructure Bank – aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent in over 7,000 multi-family units, making homes more sustainable for more than 10,000 Canadians.
“In 2025, we’re completing a deep energy retrofit in Edmonton. It’s bringing 179 modern suites to the downtown core, helping to modernize the area and provide safe and sustainable housing,” says Collett.
Headquarters: Toronto, ON
Number of employees: 101–500 employes
Centurion Asset Management has created a high-trust, high-performance environment. where ideas are exchanged freely and where people are encouraged to stretch their capabilities. The firm stays relentlessly aware of what matters to employers as it runs bi-weekly anonymous surveys on various topics such as culture, recognition, and management support, through dynamic feedback platform TINYPulse.
“Each survey is hyper-focused – whether it’s how recognized people feel, their connection to leadership, or perceptions of fairness – allowing us to gather specific, actionable insights. What sets us apart is not just the frequency of feedback, but the transparency and accountability that follow,” explains executive vice president of human capital, Laura Salvatore. “Results are reviewed and discussed with teams, leaders respond visibly, and we track improvements over time. It’s a living conversation, not a one-time data grab.”
Some of the initiatives on offer to the team are:
Wellness education surrounding various topics on financial, physical and mental wellness (i.e., healthy eating, reducing stress, etc.)
Quarterly lunch-and-learn sessions on wellness-related topics
Corporate discount with Good Life and Bike Share Toronto
Bi-weekly yoga and guided meditation classes
Monthly massage therapist at head office
Long service is also valued, with employees being entitled to an extra week of vacation. At five years, this benefit includes a $500 gift, which rises to $1,000 at 10 years.
Centurion has also recognized the importance of mental health by increasing its benefits for access to psychologists/social workers to their plan provider’s maximum. This is complemented by a 24/7 virtual healthcare app allowing employees to access medical care. Along with this, the firm has introduced a health account so employees can spend benefits on areas that mean the most to them and their families.
Ensuring that all employees feel comfortable and part of the team is a priority, and since the formation of the DE&I committee, 92 percent of employees have said they feel that cultural diversity is a strength at Centurion.
As part of the range of initiatives:
Mandatory training for all new hires designed to foster understanding, empathy, and inclusivity across all teams and departments
Monthly DE&I Committee meetings where members from across Canada meet to actively participate in discussions on crucial matters to foster collaboration and provide equal opportunities for all employees to voice their opinions and feedback
Monthly initiatives aimed at increasing awareness and understanding across the company on a variety of important subjects
Information disseminated company-wide to educate about topics such as neurodiversity, homelessness awareness, mental health awareness, Black History month, and International Women’s Day
The firm offers enhanced psychotherapy benefits, real-time virtual care, proactive burnout prevention workshops, and wellness accounts that empower employees to choose their own path to well-being. Psychological safety is also prioritized through leader training and peer programs.
Employees can take part in the Career Progression Program, which is a personalized roadmap outlining the most common ways of growth for each position.
Salvatore says, “We go beyond short-term goals to map out long-range trajectories aligned to business needs and emerging opportunities. Department-specific development tracks guide training and mentorship, while quarterly check-ins ensure continuous alignment and recalibration. Progress is documented, celebrated, and revisited regularly – turning career development into an ongoing, supported journey rather than a one-off conversation.”
The Centurion Learning Academy also provides a platform that allows employees to access bite-size snackable content anytime, anywhere, to improve soft skills such as:
having difficult conversations
presentation skills
working in teams
“Our goal is to give everyone the same access to growth, challenge, and impact because we know our strongest ideas and fastest development come when we’re learning from each other,” adds Salvatore.
Along with rating their employers on defined criteria, employees from across Canada highlighted what they feel improves their workplace.
Below is a selection of the comments shared with WP on what workers feel is beneficial:
“Appropriate application of AI, including education around it, empowers us rather than making us fear being replaced. This may not sound like high praise, but we’re in the middle of an epidemic of employers mishandling AI implementations and the communication around them.”
“Inclusion through all aspects of the company. Social events and team-building events bring the team members closer and help them become more than just coworkers.”
“Processes are streamlined and the company is always looking for ways to innovate and improve how we work.”
“Strong communication channels, both formal and informal, which help ensure that information flows smoothly and that people feel supported in their roles. This collaborative environment not only improves efficiency but also boosts morale and innovation.”
“Promoting a safe and inclusive work environment. Furthermore, for the most part, managers allow team members to arrive and leave the office during the hours that work best for the employee. I love the flexibility this provides, and it lets adults be adults.”
“Managers always ensure that employees are heard, and that their well-being comes first.”
To find and recognize the best employers in Canada’s wealth management industry, Wealth Professional first invited organizations to participate by filling out an employer form, which asked companies to highlight their offerings and practices. Next, employees from nominated companies were asked to fill out an anonymous form evaluating their workplace on a number of metrics including benefits, incentives, development, and culture.
To be considered, each organization had to reach a minimum number of employee responses based on its overall size. Organizations that achieved an 80 percent or greater average satisfaction rating from employees were named Top Employers for 2025.
