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Jennifer Publicover, head of RBC Insurance, will leave the company on June 1. The leadership change comes as Canada’s biggest bank accelerates efforts to integrate its insurance, personal banking and increasingly important wealth-management businesses.
Gillian McArdle, a spokesperson for RBC, confirmed the departure in an emailed statement to The Logic on Tuesday, but did not address additional questions about the reason for the leadership change.
Publicover, one of the division heads reporting directly to RBC chief executive officer Dave McKay, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The bank did not publicly announce her departure.
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Publicover joined RBC in April 2018 as vice-president of strategic initiatives before taking on a series of increasingly senior roles, including vice-president of enterprise efficiency and a position within the bank’s wealth-management business. She joined RBC Insurance in January 2023 and became head of the division on Sept. 1, 2024. Before joining RBC, she spent 20 years at Morgan Stanley.
Maria Winslow, senior vice-president of individual and group insurance products, will be named interim CEO of RBC Insurance. Neil McLaughlin, head of RBC Wealth Management, will take on an expanded role as head of both divisions
The departure comes as the bank pursues a broader strategic overhaul under its “One RBC” plan. In its fourth-quarter earnings report in December, McKay said its insurance arm was “integral” to the plan to better integrate the bank’s divisions, both because of its growing creditor insurance business and its work with RBC’s wealth management and personal banking divisions.
“We are on a transformational journey,” Publicover said in an investor day last year, pledging to use technology to improve the bank’s return on equity (ROE).
Last quarter, RBC Insurance generated $213 million in net income, down 22 per cent from a year earlier, representing roughly 4 per cent of the bank’s overall profit of $5.8 billion. While the division’s ROE was expected to be 35 per cent by 2027, among the highest across the bank’s divisions, McKay lowered RBC Insurance’s’s ROE target to the mid-to high 20s late last year.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with details of Neil McLaughlin’s expanded mandate.
