Open in full screen mode Employees at all the banks that “Marketplace” spoke to described meetings to encourage employees to offer more products to customers. Radio-Canada Speech synthesis, based on intelligence artificial, makes it possible to generate a spoken text from a written text. A survey of the' ;show Marketplace on CBC caught several employees of large Canadian banks prioritizing their sales objectives to the detriment of their clients. I had to deceive customers into buying products they didn't need to reach my sales goal, for example, a BMO employee recently told the show's journalists. Taking into account the testimonies of employees of the five major Canadian banks (TD, RBC, BMO, Scotiabank and CIBC ) highlighting internal pressures to offer customers potentially expensive, or even dangerous, financial products, Marketplace decided to go into the field with a hidden camera. Two branches of the five major banking institutions were put to the test in Toronto and Vancouver. We've had it all: expensive credit cards, lines of credit, bad advice about debt, and misinformation about mutual funds. A quote by Excerpt from the article from “Market Place” Hidden cameras have also surprised several times bank employees breaking the law, notes consumer rights advocate Duff Conacher.
Duff Conacher, co-founder of the Démocratie en surveillance.
What you describe is a widespread violation, said Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch. It refers to the Bank Act, which governs Canadian financial institutions.
Not advising a client to fully repay their high-interest debts constitutes a violation of a section of the Bank Act, says Mr. Conacher.
Moreover, the fees related to possible investments in mutual funds were almost all time minimized by financial advisors. Some have even falsely claimed that the fee is only charged on profits.
People are being exploited , says Sandi Martin, certified financial planner. She worked for a major bank, but left over a decade ago because she couldn't stand the sales environment.
Sandi Martin, certified financial planner.< /p>
Ms. Martin points out that fees are typically 2.5% per year for mutual funds and that' ;they reduce the potential value of a portfolio by almost half over 25 years.
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Neither bank accepted a request for an on-camera interview.
The examples described do not do not reflect the experience that millions of Canadians have daily with employees of Canadian banks.
A quote from the Canadian Bankers Association
For its part, the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC), the banking regulator, says it is concerned about banks' sales practices and says it takes the situation very seriously. .
The FCAC specifies that under the law which came into force in 2018, banks have the& #x27;obligation to offer appropriate products or services to consumers and are not permitted to provide false or misleading information.
But according to Duff Conacher the ACFC is the equivalent of a toothless guard dog. According to him, it should increase the number of unannounced inspections and impose much heavier sanctions in the event of violations.
He points out that the FCAC has imposed less than $20 million in fines over 20 years, while regulators in the US and UK have imposed multi-billion dollar fines in just 10 years.
Minister of Finance, Chrystia Freeland. (File photo)
The federal finance minister oversees the FCAC, but Chrystia Freeland has declined a request for an on-camera interview and avoided questions when Marketplace met her at a recent event in Toronto.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Ms. Freeland's office wrote that the government has zero tolerance for ;#x27;regarding banks offering misleading or inappropriate financial advice, and that it added new consumer protections to the Bank Act.
Based on an article by Eric Johnson, investigative journalist at CBC.