National Bank has moved its personal banking to IT veteran Julie Lévesque. She takes the EVP role on January 1, 2026, as longtime retail lead Lucie Blanchet retires after 23 years and shifts to a CEO advisory post. National says Lévesque will keep oversight of tech and operations for Personal and Commercial Banking, a clean sign that core systems will call the shots in retail.
Integration Sets The Calendar
The timing lines up with the Canadian Western Bank deal. National Bank closed that acquisition on February 3, 2025, and has been moving clients over in waves through fall 2025 with branches reopening under the National Bank sign as each cohort migrates. The last big retail titles shift on January 1 suggests the heavy lift on migrations is largely done by year end, then retail runs on the new stack.
The price tag and prep were not small. The bank booked about C$5.3 billion of equity consideration for CWB, C$5.6 billion including shares already held, and raised roughly C$1.04 billion via subscription receipts at C$112.30 to help fund and keep capital ratios healthy. That is real cash and real dilution, which makes getting to steady state on schedule worth actual earnings.
Management promised cost and funding benefits when they announced the deal, naming about C$270 million a year at full run rate. That’s only collected if the plumbing, data, and branches work as one, which explains why an operator from technology now owns the retail P&L.
Tech Now Runs Retail Budget
Titles moved beyond retail, too. Wealth EVP Nancy Paquet takes over investment distribution and insurance, both previously under Personal Banking. Capital Markets EVP Étienne Dubuc picks up the independent dealer network and tech and ops strategy for wealth and markets. General counsel Dominic Paradis adds enterprise technology and resilience to his file. Those are control lines, not window dressing, and they put switches for sales channels and uptime under fewer desks.
“Julie is a seasoned banking executive… well positioned to optimize the Bank’s operational and technological… model,” CEO Laurent Ferreira said. The person who ran the pipes is now in charge of what flows through them, which should cut cycle time on branch changes and app fixes.
In 2024, National Bank reported C$462 billion in assets and about 30,000 employees, and it now owns CWB’s western footprint outright. That many people and that much balance sheet only move cleanly when the organizational chart matches the systems map, which this reorganization is trying to do.
The one open item is execution, the dull part where debit cards activate, payees port, and branches reopen on schedule. National Bank says migrations are staged and clients get at least a month’s notice, which is how you avoid angry Mondays. If those dates slip, expect the cost benefits to slide with them.
