1.  

An exceptional workforce of highly trained professionals

Ontario's finance and insurance sector employs 358,000 people, nearly half of them in banking. It includes:

• 7,000 charter-holding financial analysts (CFAs)
• more than 9,000 certified financial planners (CFPs)
• more than 30,000 chartered accountants (CAs) – 20,000 of them in Toronto and the surrounding area.

Top-ranked business schools

Our MBA programs have won international acclaim for the high quality of their graduates. For five of the past seven years, the Financial Times annual list of the world's best MBA programs has ranked University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management in the top ten worldwide in its 'Best in Finance' category, alongside Wharton, NYU, University of Chicago and London Business School.

New global risk institute, centre of education excellence launched

To build on Canada's growing reputation in financial risk management, a new Global Risk Institute in Financial Services (GRi) has been established in Toronto. The institute's focus is on applied research and leading-edge thinking across multiple risk management disciplines.

To leverage quality and diversity of financial services education in Ontario, the Centre of Excellence in Financial Services Education has been launched. The Centre has an online talent engine that enables students to find the right programs and helps companies find the talent they need.

An international centre for specialized industry education

Industry professionals have come to Ontario from around the world for decades to learn the latest techniques in professional financial services management. Top centres for education, certification and training include CSI Global Education (formerly the Canadian Securities Institute) and the Toronto Centre: Leadership in Financial Supervision.

2.  

High performance ICT services

The size and scope of Ontario's ICT industry ensures that high quality ICT services are available at competitive costs.

The Greater Toronto Area is North America's third largest centre for ICT, surpassing Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles. We also have significant clusters in the Kitchener-Waterloo and Ottawa regions.

Algorithmics, the world's leader in enterprise risk management software, was founded in Toronto in 1989. Today its worldwide client list includes 70 of the world's top 100 banks.

3.  

A cost-efficient business environment

Business costs in Ontario are lower than in any G7 jurisdiction, according to KPMG's Competitive Alternatives 2010.

We have launched a comprehensive tax reform program to fuel business growth. Ontario's marginal effective tax rate (provincial and federal combined) on new capital investment plummeted from 32.8 per cent in 2009 to 18.6 per cent in 2010 and will continue to drop to 16.2 per cent by 2018.

Our firms already pay significantly lower corporate taxes than their competitors in any major U.S. city, according to KPMG's Competitive Alternatives 2010 Special Report: Focus on Tax. For companies in the corporate and IT services sectors, the total tax impact (including income, capital, property, sales, payroll and other taxes) in Toronto was approximately two-thirds the U.S average and much lower than the tax burden in Chicago or New York.