TORONTO, Dec. 7, 2020 /CNW/ - In celebration of its two-year anniversary, The Scotiabank Women Initiative ™ has launched a new Digital Hub, in collaboration with Shopify, Google Canada, LinkedIn, Facebook and HubSpot focused on delivering key resources to help women entrepreneurs adapt to uncertain economic times.

In addition, The Scotiabank Women Initiative today announced the expansion of the program into Scotia Wealth Management.

The Scotiabank Women Initiative Expands to Include Financial Advice for Scotia Wealth Management clients

Recognizing that women have long been underserved by the wealth management industry, The Scotiabank Women Initiative has expanded to inspire and empower women to take charge of their financial futures by offering a newly formed, comprehensive approach to financial advice and wealth services.

 "We understand that women have distinct wealth management needs," said Erin Griffiths, Senior Vice President, Client Solutions and Direct Investing at Scotia Wealth Management. "An overwhelming majority of women investors want to learn more about investing and consider advice from a wealth advisor to be helpful for one or more life events, yet only 22 per cent of women have a formal written financial plan prepared by a professional*. With a dedicated advisory board and expert consultants, we are building Scotiabank's Total Wealth offering, to transform the way we serve women clients and inspire and empower women to take charge of their financial futures."

Progress of the program to date

Launched December 5, 2018, The Scotiabank Women Initiative is a comprehensive program designed to support women-owned and women-led businesses in Canada. Since that time, the program has achieved the following:

• Deployed two-thirds of the three billion dollars committed to women-owned and women-led businesses in its first three years.
• Engaged more than 2,000 women entrepreneurs across the country through over 100 Un-Mentorship Boot Camps™ and Mentorship sessions that help women increase their business savvy by networking and exploring business challenges.
• Collaborated with more than 15 organizations including Disruption Ventures, Forum for Women Entrepreneurs, Réseau des Femmes d'affaires du Québec and MNP.

In 2019, The Scotiabank Women Initiative expanded into Global Banking and Markets. This bespoke program for women is designed using client feedback – from emerging leaders to senior executives – to support their pursuit of their best professional futures and to take their careers and businesses even further through exclusive access to Innovation, Advisory, and Education solutions. In its inaugural year, the program created a dedicated educational series designed to facilitate sharing resources and building subject matter expertise, a tailored good corporate governance program and support for clients on their Diversity & Inclusion journey – among other initiatives.

"From the onset, our mission for The Scotiabank Women Initiative has been to advance women-owned and women-led businesses in Canada," said Gillian Riley, President and CEO, Tangerine Bank, and executive sponsor of The Scotiabank Women Initiative. "In pursuit of that mission, we engaged with women entrepreneurs, conducted research and collected data to respond more precisely to the needs of women business owners and leaders. When the pandemic hit, we knew we had to pivot and so we developed The Digital Hub an online platform to help them transform and thrive during these challenging times."

*Source: PMG Intelligence, Women & Investing, December 2019

The Scotiabank Women Initiative Digital Hub

The Scotiabank Women Initiative Digital Hub, now available at https://www.scotiabank.com/women-initiative/ca/en/digital-hub.html, provides articles, stories, templates and training to drive growth and connection online for women entrepreneurs. In collaboration with Shopify, Google Canada, Facebook, HubSpot and LinkedIn, the Digital Hub provides resources to help pivot and grow business within a new digital ecosystem.

About The Scotiabank Women Initiative 
The Scotiabank Women Initiative is a comprehensive program to help advance women-owned and women-led businesses across Canada through three key pillars: Access to Capital, Mentorship and Education. Since launching in December 2018, The Scotiabank Women Initiative has achieved several notable milestones. In September 2019, the Bank committed to deploy three billion dollars in capital to women-led businesses in its first three years. The program has engaged more than 2,000 women through our Boot Camps and group mentorship sessions across Canada. We formed The Scotiabank Women Initiative Advisory Board of Scotiabank executives, who provide expertise to help women grow their businesses through facilitated small group mentorship sessions and we developed an online Knowledge Centre for self-directed learning. For more information on The Scotiabank Women Initiative, visit scotiabankwomeninitiative.com.

About Scotiabank
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. With a team of over 90,000 employees and assets of approximately $1.1 trillion (as at October 31, 2020), Scotiabank trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: BNS) and New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: BNS). For more information, please visit http://www.scotiabank.com and follow us on Twitter @ScotiabankViews.

SOURCE Scotiabank