CI Financial Corp. is a diversified wealth management and asset management firm headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, founded in 1965. The company’s visual identity centers on a square-format mark featuring the letters “CI,” rendered in a blue and gray palette, a design that has been in place since the company’s major rebranding in 2005.
Design and History
The current CI Financial logo dates to June 2005, when the company underwent a significant corporate rebranding. At that time, CI Mutual Funds changed its name to CI Investments, and its parent company, CI Fund Management Inc., adopted the name CI Financial to reflect its status as a diversified wealth management firm and holding company. In conjunction with the name change, the company adopted a new logo and a new website address, www.ci.com. [1] [2]
The rebranding was announced by CI president and CEO Peter W. Anderson, who said the new name better reflected the company’s broad and diverse lineup of investment options, including mutual funds, segregated funds, structured products, alternative investments and asset allocation programs. [3]
In November 2020, CI Investments Inc. announced it was rebranding to CI Global Asset Management (“CI GAM”), a change designed to improve the client experience and better reflect the organization’s investment capabilities. The rebrand was described by CEO Kurt MacAlpine as “a key element of our strategy to modernize our asset management business.” With this rebrand, legacy in-house investment boutique brands, including Cambridge Global Asset Management, Harbour Advisors, Sentry Investment Management and Signature Global Asset Management, were phased out and brought under the CI Global Asset Management name. [4]
In August 2023, CI Financial rebranded its U.S. wealth management unit, CI Private Wealth, as Corient. The company said the Corient brand had been “thoroughly re-imagined” with a newly designed logo, while the CI Private Wealth brand continued to be used for its Canadian ultra-high-net-worth wealth management business. [5]
Meaning and Symbolism
The CI Financial logo features a square-format mark in gray and blue. The company’s graphic standards documentation specifies the corporate blue as CMYK values C=100, M=56, Y=0, K=34, indicating a deep blue tone used in the primary logo artwork. [6] The square format provides a distinctive structural framework for the “CI” lettering, and the mark is designed to reproduce at a minimum width of one inch to preserve detail. [6]
Typography and Design
The CI Financial brand name is set in a sans-serif typeface, as documented in the company’s graphic standards for identity use. The standards also specify that the logo may be reproduced in black, reversed (white), or in full color, with the corporate blue being the primary color application. [6]
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