Pembina Autopac siteto close, be converted

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This article was published 20/05/2016 (3604 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Autopac service centre on Pembina Highway will close later this summer, and the building will be converted into office space in the wake of a shift in business volumes to newer, larger claim centres in other areas of the city.

MPI spokesman Brian Smiley said the Crown corporation noticed in recent years 75 per cent of the customers within the catchment area for the Pembina Highway service centre, which is located at 420 Pembina Hwy., went to other service centres in the city.

“It wasn’t a huge surprise for us to see this shift in usage,” Smiley said. “When new service centres were constructed in Winnipeg, their locations were carefully selected to meet future anticipated demand based on projected population growth and new community development.”

He said the newer centres, which were built seven or eight years ago as part of a $35-million upgrade and overhaul of the corporation’s service-centre operations, are all operating at full capacity. So it made sense to convert the Pembina Highway building, which MPI owns, to another use and to transfer the 29 employees to other service centres that could use the extra help.

He said the Pembina Highway building will be renovated and converted into office space for about 100 MPI workers who will be relocated from a leased building on Ellice Avenue. The workers, who include data analysts and project managers, were part of the overflow from MPI’s headquarters in the downtown Cityplace complex, which the corporation owns.

He said moving them back into a company-owned building will save MPI nearly $1 million annually in operating costs, “which ultimately benefits all ratepayers without sacrificing service.”

The Pembina Highway service centre is the first to be repurposed, and Smiley said “no additional changes are planned at this time,”

IGM buys into adviser

One of Canada’s largest mutual fund operators is investing up to US$75 million to buy into a U.S. digital wealth adviser.

IGM Financial Inc. had already paid US$50 million to acquire a 10 per cent stake in Personal Capital Corp.

The Winnipeg-based fund and wealth-management company — part of the Power group of companies — will spend a further US$25 million over the next 12 months to increase its stake in Personal Capital to 15 per cent.

Personal Capital was founded by its chief executive officer, Bill Harris, whose previous experience include stints as CEO of Intuit — maker of the TurboTax and Quicken software — and later PayPal, an electronic payments system.

It recently surpassed US$2 billion of assets under management, with about one-third of that from clients with at least US$1 million invested with the San Francisco-based company. On average, it manages US$300,000 per client.

—staff / The Canadian Press