Good Morning, and thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
On behalf of BMO Financial Group, l am pleased to join today's discussion on identity theft, and more specifically on how Canada's banks protect our customers, employees, and assets from harm against fraud and other criminal conduct.
It is timely to appear here today so shortly after the wrap-up of fraud prevention month at the end of March. In March, BMO joined other financial institutions, consumer groups, law enforcement agencies, and our partners in the Canadian Bankers Association to raise awareness about fraud and crime reduction.
BMO takes identity fraud and all criminal activity very seriously. We believe each of our employees has an important role to play in fraud reduction. At BMO, our corporate policies are designed to prevent, detect, and respond to suspected criminal activity. Our work in corporate security is the product of a nearly 200-year history of protecting our clients' information while providing them with convenient access to their accounts.
The protection of our clients' information means responding to evolving and complex criminal activities, such as fraud, corruption, cybercrime, and acts of violence. We provide all of our employees with clarity in their roles and responsibilities for individuals and their respective corporate groups to be engaged in the management of criminal risk.
Just two months ago we organized a number of activities that raised awareness, including hosting anti-fraud sessions with employees across our organization, ensuring that anti-phishing brochures were available for our customers in our branches, providing fraud avoidance tips on our bank statements, and getting our message out over Twitter and Facebook.
Our staff, serving across our lines of business and ranging from our customer service representatives in our local branches to our commodities and futures traders, are our front line in our fight against fraud. We work with them to develop programs to prevent and detect criminal risk in such areas of responsibility as managing internal controls on cash, credit and transaction processing, client and financial information management, and regulatory monitoring and compliance.
Our corporate environment continuously evolves with considerable innovation of our internal controls and processes. Our criminal risk environment changes daily, and the banks are organized to respond to it. We try through authentication to validate information and documentation; however, the quality and security of documents can be inconsistent across jurisdictions, and there are few reliable ways to universally authenticate documentation.
We have zero tolerance towards criminal activity and have practices in place to manage our response to any activity that takes place.
A part of those efforts is to identify individuals conducting financial fraud. As an industry, we invest millions of dollars and dedicate hundreds of employees to the prevention of, detection of, and response to criminal behaviour. As well, we collaborate on initiatives, in some cases organized as an industry by and through the CBA, to identify criminals and work with law enforcement to prosecute them.
Banks have highly sophisticated security systems and experts in place to protect customers' information and to protect them from being the victims of financial fraud. Each bank, as noted above, heavily invests in the identification of fraudulent activity. The adoption of chip and PIN standards alone has cost the industry millions of dollars to reduce the risk of card fraud in Canada.
However, as the environment changes daily, organized crime turns more and more to new technologies and has migrated and exploited other avenues. Industry forums and collaborative tools are in place to share fraud patterns and preventative controls. Through the CBA and other forums, we liaise with a multitude of parties to enable the protection of the industry. These could be ISPs for cybercrime, insurance for common fraud, or law enforcement to share trends.
We also do this internationally. As of two weeks ago, I met with my peers from more than 30 banks internationally to discuss the risks we face, the manner in which we can protect our institutions and customers, and how to best collaborate and expend our efforts.
Mr. Chairman, it's clear that the protection of the credentials you and I and members of the committee each establish as part of our unique digital identities is a team effort between the individuals who hold them and the vendors whom they trust with them.
At BMO we are proud of the Canadian banking sector's strong record of ensuring safe and convenient access to our clients' financial information.
On behalf of BMO, I'm pleased to be here today, and I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.