Finance committee  Thank you, and good afternoon, Mr. Chair. My name is James McPhedran. I'm responsible for Scotiabank's retail distribution network in Canada. In this role I lead the bank's regional and local branch managers and employees and oversee our branch network. I have been a Scotiabank

Finance committee  Sure, I'll start. I can tell you that the FCAC is in our office right now, as is OSFI, working on the review that we all know about. The first aspect of the review is a data-gathering exercise, which has been under way for a couple of weeks. We owe a full pack of data to the F

Finance committee  Of course.

Finance committee  Yes. We have a very significant process that monitors sales practices. That begins in the branch, as you talked about, in terms of next-day reviews and ensuring that the right thing is going on. Then, at head office, we look at a variety of mechanisms using analytics that look at

Finance committee  I think a large part of your question is about how goals are set. I think it's important for the committee to know that our goals are set in a balanced approach. For us that means that our front-line tellers don't have sales targets, that our advisers are targeted with customer e

Finance committee  Similarly, in our contacts and our channels, we record every call. We also have a mechanism whereby we do speech analytics. If there are things we want to look at specifically, we can pull those calls out and have a look there. In our branch channel, it's done mostly through coa

Finance committee  I'll speak on behalf of Scotiabank. The majority of our concerns are rectified through our internal channels, whether that be what we call our office of the president or our internal ombudsman. The number of concerns that are rectified there is in the 95% plus range. Ultimately,

Finance committee  Our goal is clear for everybody in our organization, and that's to treat our people with fairness and respect. We're in the customer business, and an engaged employee base leads to an engaged customer base. The data shows that over 90% of our people say that their manager treats

Finance committee  I want to be clear on this. Adherence to our code of conduct is non-negotiable. This is understood in our organization. Our employees similarly take courses with respect to the code every year. We have six tenets in our code of conduct. One of these demands that our employees c

Finance committee  Our tellers have no sales targets. The situation of that customer might lead them to encourage them to meet with our financial advisers. That's as far as it would go.

Finance committee  That would be a referral if they think it's in the best interests of their customer.

Finance committee  We're in the business of engaging our customers. We're in the business of customer satisfaction. Our customer satisfaction levels right now are at all-time highs. If there's a specific—

Finance committee  Yes, it's similar. Ultimately, we sit down with a customer and determine their needs. If there is a pre-approval on the file, the majority of customers would be pleased with that because they would see it as being good service.

Finance committee  It's similar. A breach of our code, as I said, is absolutely non-negotiable in terms of how we would follow that up.

Finance committee  I would pick up on what we've done in light of the stories. We've redoubled our efforts on a variety of fronts. One of them deals with the internal feedback channels. We call them “pathways to resolution”. We've been very vocal and communicative in that respect, so people know th