Finance Committee on Feb. 19th, 2007

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

It was not them.

[Richard Bouchard]

No, it was the ombudsman.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Very good.

If I have some more time, I'm going to share it with Mr. Del Mastro.

Dr. Callon, how many visits a year did you say you have?

[Jim Callon]

On visits to the website, right now it's 1.1 million.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

How long has it been up and running?

[Jim Callon]

It's been up for five years.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

You've seen a general increase in website visits. Is that correct?

[Jim Callon]

It's an increase by over 70% a year.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

What is that telling you in terms of consumer satisfaction with the banking environment?

[Jim Callon]

I'd also note that we've noticed a decline in complaints over the last two years. One theory could be that as you put more information out into the marketplace, more information that's neutral and from a credible source, people can find out exactly what their rights are and what the responsibilities of the institutions are. You'll likely have less misunderstanding and fewer complaints.

I cannot make the correlation directly, but I would say that for the last two years, inquiries have gone up both in terms of the call centre and in terms of the website. On the other hand, complaints have gone down.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Thank you.

I'll share my time with Mr. Del Mastro, please.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

I'll quickly ask this, Dr. Callon. My colleague from the NDP often points out that branch closures is a big problem. Your document in fact documents some 937 branch closures since 2001-02. I'll come back to this, if you don't have enough time.

Generally, I'd say that our banks are pretty good. We have a good banking system, and they're good corporate citizens. But could we make a case here that they may be skimming some of the markets and not really providing good service for the market they've been given?

Think about it and we'll come back to you.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Massimo Pacetti]

We'll go to John McKay, and then Dean.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Skimming, for goodness' sake.

For my part, we've had five branch closures in my riding and three openings. In all instances, the banks replacing the ones that were there are better, bigger, and more efficient, and a couple of them have drive-through facilities, which I like.

I want to go back to Mr. Legault and feed off Mr. Wallace's question. Were you saying that effectively, if you folks as a payment system and the banks as a particular group within that payment system agreed on a voluntary clearing arrangement, the posting and payment would be simultaneously recognized for this specific group of banks and this specific group of creditors or payees without legislation?

[Guy Legault]

Yes. In fact, we have one rule that provides for it under the bill payments. During your last hearings, I think it was referred to as our rule H6. However, that rule is basically being used by 20% of the billers. One of the things we're planning to do is launch a consultation paper. We're presenting it to our board in March to see if we can in fact better understand the marketplace, to basically see what has changed since we put the rule in place, and to see what we can do to address some of the issues that we're hearing about right now.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

I don't understand rule H6. I've never read rule H6 and don't really know what you're referencing there.

It's a little puzzling to have 75% of transactions handled by five banks. A lot of payees would fall into the category of municipalities, credit cards, or whatever--large respectable institutions. To not have those transactions clear instantaneously between post and payment, I'm hard-pressed to understand what the issue is here when we are a very wired country.

[Guy Legault]

There is no online, real-time, end-to-end processing that supports the payment of a bill. As I mentioned earlier, most consumer bill payments or the information respecting bill payments must flow to those foreign-related systems. So it doesn't matter the size of the organization, you still have to go through these various systems.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

If I go to my computer tonight, open up my account, open up the pay bills section, and pay CIBC $100 out of my TD account or whatever it is--Mr. Del Mastro's account--you're telling me that doesn't happen. Even though I have electronic verification that the money has been removed from my account, it's not credited to my Visa account.

[Guy Legault]

You have to realize that there are cut-offs. In this instance you just talked about, you're doing it tonight, so you've missed the cut-off for today.

As I mentioned earlier, it's not online in real time. Basically it has to occur the next day, and it still has to go through those four steps.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

But it shows that the money has been removed from my account. That's real.

[Guy Legault]

I don't dispute that.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

So I'm real on one side, but I'm not real on the other.

[Guy Legault]

You have the goods.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

I have the goods but I don't have the payment, I don't have the credit. The money has come out of my account, but I don't have the money credited--

[Guy Legault]

I suggest you ask the credit card associations, which are not part of the CPA's mandate. That's another group you may want to talk to.