Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good morning.
It's a pleasure to be with you this morning at this hearing of the Standing Committee on Finance. I commend you for undertaking this study on tax havens, which is clearly an issue for all members of Parliament.
My name is Steven Blackburn, and I am the vice-president and chief AML officer for CIBC.
As many of you know, CIBC is a Canadian-based financial institution. Through our three main business units—retail and business banking, wealth management, and wholesale banking—our 42,000 employees provide a full range of financial products and services to more than 11 million individuals, small businesses, commercial entities, corporate entities, and institutional clients in Canada and around the world. CIBC was recently named the strongest bank in North America, and the third strongest bank in the world by Bloomberg Markets magazine.
In my role I am responsible for all aspects of CIBC's anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing regime, including our AML program, our policies and standards, inherent risk assessment, AML training, effectiveness testing, and reporting to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, otherwise known as FINTRAC, as well as to law enforcement agencies.
CIBC has implemented procedures to ensure that all relevant regulatory obligations with respect to client identification and reporting of suspicious transactions, large cash transactions, electronic funds transfers, and cross-border movements of cash and monetary instruments are met in each jurisdiction in which we operate.
In addition to running CIBC's financial investigations unit, I provide advice to business units with respect to the application and interpretation of AML law, our policy and standards, and the application and interpretation of Canadian and American sanctions. I also assist individual business units with the development, implementation, and monitoring of policies and procedures under our AML compliance regime, including the regular testing of their effectiveness in partnership with CIBC's internal audit group.
I know that our appearance here today is a small part of your larger study, and I'm aware that the Canadian Bankers Association presented a broad-based financial services sector perspective to you a few weeks ago.
I look forward to answering your questions this morning, along with my colleagues, and I hope we're able to provide some clarity and useful commentary as you consider this important subject.
Thank you.