Finance committee  Mr. Chair, honourable members of the committee, thank you for having me today. My name is Lucie Blanchet. I am Senior Vice-President, Strategy, Distribution, Solutions and Processes Retail Banking at the National Bank of Canada. First, I'd like to say that we have carefully fol

Finance committee  Could you speak a little louder?

Finance committee  In fact, according to our client-oriented approach, we work first and foremost in the interest of our client. We explore his or her needs in order to propose the most pertinent solutions. Our clients ask us to be proactive and to anticipate their needs, to be relevant in all of o

Finance committee  Yes, all of the conversations in our call centres are recorded. In certain situations the client can also have access to those recordings at his request.

Finance committee  Yes. We do use the recordings of calls to train our employees and get them to improve the relevance of the conversations. However, we have several internal sectors at the Bank that are independent, such as the internal audit sectors, that report directly to the president and the

Finance committee  Yes, the people on the third line of defence are employees of the National Bank. It is important to note that these sectors are independent. As I said, internal audit reports directly to the board of directors. We also have a client ombudsman and an employee ombudsman. We have bo

Finance committee  As I mentioned in my opening statement, the sound management of risk is an inherent part of our corporate culture, and it is deeply rooted in our organization. We take this very seriously and we work in close cooperation with all of our internal independent sectors to constantly

Finance committee  I would say no.

Finance committee  First, because they are very closely aligned with our practices. Our third line of defence employees are very aware of what goes on in our organization. They have access to all of the material we can make available, and we are very transparent about this. And so I would say no, I

Finance committee  I do not have that information in hand right now. What I can confirm is that operational quality and risk management are an inherent part of the management framework surrounding the performance of our employees. That is on an equal footing with reaching financial objectives. In t

Finance committee  That's correct. To my knowledge, there were no allegations against the National Bank as such. We took the situation very seriously nevertheless, because this undermines the credibility of our industry, which is important to us. So my answer is no. We also did some work within ou

Finance committee  It is important to put the financial objectives in context and to talk about our performance management framework. It is completely aligned with our corporate priorities. One of the fundamental elements of our corporate culture is to ensure a balance among stakeholders. We know

Finance committee  I will be brief, but it's important to put the financial objectives in perspective. The first component of the performance management framework is client satisfaction. The second is operational quality and risk management. Corporate values constitute the third element. The fo

Finance committee  In fact, it is crucial to ensure that financial objectives are not overrated or given more importance than the other dimensions. Another fundamental aspect is the fact that the performance management framework is rooted in a corporate ecosystem; it doesn't function in a vacuum.

Finance committee  Well, it's the same here. The first thing our clients want, and this is clear from all of our client satisfaction surveys, is that we be relevant, that we anticipate their needs, and that we exceed their expectations. All of that is that the centre of our client-focused approach