Talk:Banking in Canada

Categorization of the various banks in Canada
Did any Canadian lawyer help create this article? I think that to divide all Canadian banks into two broad categories: 1) the "Big Five" banks, and 2) "second tier" banks (i.e. all other banks), is bit simplistic for a Wikipedia article. I will concede that this is how the average Canadian would probably classify the banks given how the Schedule II banks, like HSBC Bank Canada, ING Bank of Canada, and Citibank of Canada, attract alot of Canadian customers while de-emphasizing their foreign connections. However, this article should also emphasize the three legal classes/categories of banks set out in the federal Bank Act because this three-tier system seems like the closest thing to an "official" classification and one which is (sadly) known mostly by lawyers and law students. I wish more people, including bankers and the lowliest tellers, would look at the three schedules of the Bank Act more often.

It is disgusting how many ordinary Canadians made reference to the name "TD Canada Trust" and don't realize that it is a simply a business name and misleading moniker to hide from patrons of the defunct Canada Trust the fact that they have unwittingly become customers of the Toronto Dominion Bank, a bank which they may have hated when they were account holders with Canada Trust. Bank mergers is a hot-button political issue here in Canada. The Toronto Dominion Bank, which was commonly referred to as "TD Bank" prior to its complete takeover/swallowing of Canada Trust, is wise to adopt a hybrid-like business name like "TD Canada Trust" to fool patrons of the defunct Canada Trust into believing that much publicized (and criticized) the TD Bank - Canada Trust deal was a merger of two banks, like the creation of CIBC, and not a takeover by one big bank and the weakest of the old "Big Six" from the 1980s and early 1990s. "Big Six" has turned into "Big Five", and God help Canadian consumers if "Big Four" or "Big Three" is somewhere in the foreseeable future.

User:Alf74 9:22, 2 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm rewriting my comments. IANAL and made the original edits. I personally don't have a problem with TD's brand management strategy. It's not like Canada Trust customers don't see the big TD on their statements and realize they were absorbed into TD's customer base. Deet 23:42, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

The other banks, or the Schedual two banks do not mean much in Canada. Living in Canada their branches might make up about 1% of all bank branches, and their market share is very small. The smallest major bank is equal to them all added up probably multiplied by a factor of 20. Their market penetration is next to nothing. --74.104.48.172 16:35, 12 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I do not dispute that the Schedule II banks have little market presence in Canada AS A WHOLE. However, try visiting any of the big Canadian cities like Toronto or Vancouver, or even Ottawa or Hamilton, and you will notice a lot of HSBC banks.  In Vancouver, in particular, there are probably as many HSBC banks as any one of the Big Five banks, and certainly more branches of HSBC Bank Canada than the Schedule I National Bank (which are seemingly everywhere in Ottawa.)  It seems to me that Schedule II banks (and I am not just talking about HSBC) are more present in big cities with large immigrant communities, such as the Chinese immigrant community.  Go into any HSBC bank and you will surely find a Chinese-looking teller who can speak either Cantonese or Mandarin and make the Chinese immigrant bank customer feel like he/she is in Hong Kong again.  Of course, if one lives in Kenora, Swift Current or somewhere else outside the big cities, it is a totally different story. User:Alf74 10:15, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Creation of Money
Money is created by a combination of commercial banks and the Bank of Canada.

"The Bank of Canada is not able to control the money supply directly, because the deposit portion of the money supply results from decisions made within the private banking system. By taking deposits from individual Canadian households and firms and then lending these funds, the commercial banks, in essence, "create" money because, in theory, the new funds will be redeposited in the banking system. However, the money-creation powers of the commercial banks are constrained by 2 factors. First, if interest yields on other financial assets rise, Canadians will probably choose to hold a relatively smaller portion of their wealth as coin, currency and (largely low-yield) money deposits. Second, the banks are limited in loan expansion by the need to retain reserves (basically cash in the vault, and deposits of the individual banks at the Bank of Canada) to meet possible withdrawal needs. By altering interest rates and the level of banking reserves, or both, the Bank of Canada can manipulate the money supply indirectly with a high degree of precision (particularly over periods of 3 to 6 months or longer)."

- Canadian Encyclopedia

--Omnicog 18:02, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Introduction
I find that saying "Banking in Canada is one of the most efficient and safest banking systems in the world. According to the Ministry of Finance, Canada’s banks, also called chartered banks, have over 8,000 branches and almost 18,000 automated banking machines (ABMs) across the country[1]. In addition, "Canada has the highest number of ABMs per capita in the world and benefits from the highest penetration levels of electronic channels such as debit cards, Internet banking and telephone banking"." as the introduction of the article is a pretty strong assertion, especially if there are no references.

A quick search on the number of ATMs in other countries brought up this page for example http://www.ecb.int/bc/faqbc/figures/html/index.en.html, which says that Spain, France or Italy, countries with roughly twice Canada's population, all have far more than 2*18000=36000 ATMs. So the assertion might still hold with the total number of ATMs (as opposed of ATMs of domestic banks) but I feel the whole introduction needs to be fact-checked.

142.58.65.62 18:50, 9 November 2007 (UTC)


 * The introduction stemmed from http://www.fin.gc.ca/toce/2002/bank_e.html, specifically:
 * "Canada’s banks operate through an extensive network that includes over 8,000 branches and close to 18,000 automated banking machines (ABMs) across the country. Canada has the highest number of ABMs per capita in the world and benefits from the highest penetration levels of electronic channels such as debit cards, Internet banking and telephone banking."
 * Feel free to improve the article if you think there is conflicting information. Deet 00:27, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

The information contained in the introduction of this article is quite dated, in particular the quantity of ABM's. According to the Canadian Bankers Association in 2012 there are over 59,000 ABM's in Canada of which 17,590 belong to Banks. The assertion that Canada enjoys the highest penetration levels of electronic channels needs to be substantiated by more recent data. Perhaps a more neutral assertion would detail the proportion of Canadians banking online in a given year. Again according to the CBA in 2012, 45% of Canadians use internet banking as their main means of banking, while 63% say they have used online banking in the past year. 

Under all sections there are important modifications to be made. The article must keep up with recent developments in banking, such as the sale of ING Direct's online business to BNS and the dual head offices of BMO in both Montreal and Toronto. Perhaps a more complete treatise of banking in Canada, from banking mores and commercial practices to the place of financial institutions in the Canadian economy. A quick survey of official information sources such as osfi-bsif, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Justice, Banks' regulatory filings and press releases, CHMC-SCHL provide detailed information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vbernier (talk • contribs) 19:12, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Section on banking/retail banking
I had suggested changing the second sentence in the section "Big Five" to reflect their Canadian banking activities, as opposed to just retail banking. It currently reads "Unlike the smaller Canadian banks, the Big Five are not just Canadian banks, but are instead better described as international financial conglomerates, each with a large Canadian banking division. In fiscal 2007, RBC's Canadian segment called "Personal Financial Services" (the segment most related to what was traditionally thought of as retail banking) had revenue of only CAD$5,082 million (or 22.6%) of a total revenue of CAD$22,462 million.[1]" While I have no problem with either sentence, in the current context the two do not work well together - it tends to imply that RBC (and by extension other Cdn banks) derive the balance of their activities from (vaguely defined) international or other non-banking activities.

Which, if one looks at RBC, is not true: its Canadian "personal and business banking" is 60% of the business, and it's this 60% that best corresponds to the core retail/business banking that most associate with "banking". Put differently, they are largely not financial conglomerates that have grown well beyond their origin and now have huge portions of their business that don't resemble the original business (like e.g. a Citibank), but large financial groups whose core historic business still mostly dominates.

I'm open to any suggestion that would address that...--Gregalton 16:38, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

History - Origins
The following sentence should be re-written. "These institutions issued the only local currency notes until amendments in the British North America Act allowed federal and provincial governments to begin to introduce their own notes starting in 1866." Either the reference to the British North America Act or the date 1866 is wrong. The first British North America Act wasn't enacted until 1867. The sentence is a bit "fuzzy" as well -- provincial governments could not issue currency on or after July 1, 1867, (because it became exclusive federal jurisdiction) and federal government could not before July 1, 1867, (because it did not exist). Hebbgd (talk) 13:57, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

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Dispute resolution
Just now I created a new section to deal with ADRBO.

Since the late 1990s, dispute resolution across the sector was directed to the independent Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments (OSBI). As of 2018, Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto-Dominion Bank and Scotiabank direct dispute resolution to the for-profit Chambers Banking Ombuds Office (ADRBO). As reported in The Globe and Mail in 2018, "[t]he Canadian Foundation for Advancement of Investor Rights (FAIR) has compared ADRBO unfavourably with OBSI," noting a statement from FAIR that they "have serious concerns about the conflicts of interest, misaligned incentives, and level of transparency and accountability at ADRBO". In 2018, John Lawford, executive director of consumer rights group the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, criticized ADRBO for not "[adhering] to the same openness principles" that OBSI brought to the table, adding that customer's are likely to experience "less success with their banking complaints" at ADRBO as a result. As of 2021, National Bank of Canada and Digital Commerce Bank are also reported to use ADRBO. In 2021, concerning an incident where TD Bank was able to find records that RSP funds has been transferred out of a customer's account, but not find records as to where they had gone, Duff Conacher, cofounder of accountability group Democracy Watch, observed that "most of Canada's big banks are avoiding accountability by essentially policing themselves when it comes to consumer complaints."

This strikes me as good enough for a first draft.

Not used: http://faircanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/180910-Chart-of-OBSI-vs-ADBRO-2018.pdf

Also not used from Evans: Last year, OBSI recommended that a total of $165,023 be given to people with complaints about banks, with an average finding of $2,089 and the largest single recommendation coming in at $17,653. While its rulings are non-binding, it can levy individual awards of up to $350,000 and can name and shame financial firms who choose to ignore their decisions on its website. Last year, none of the big banks ignored an OBSI ruling, the watchdog said.

Last year, OBSI ruled in favour of consumers roughly one out of every five times it heard a case. In 2017:
 * OBSI got 131 complaints about Scotiabank, and the ombud sided with the customer in 23 of those cases.
 * OBSI got 77 about CIBC, and ruled with the customer in 13 of them.
 * OBSI heard 52 complaints about the Bank of Montreal, and sided with the customer in 13 of them.

It's not hard to see why Scotiabank fled OBSI. The number of adverse judgements is hardly material (a tiny percentage of the operating budget), but the need to control the public-facing statistics probably burns bright.

Note that I'm generally one-and-done, so any future editor who wishes to wade in, fill your boots. I will add that personally I see no way that a hard-headed account of this kind of arbitration self-dealing on the part of the major Canadian banks should end up becoming flattering in any way. &mdash; MaxEnt 13:02, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Original 2006 content with no citations lacking context
When the article was first created in 2006 there were no references at all. The original 2006 article included these sentences in the section "Recent history":
 * "In the 1980s and 1990s, the largest banks acquired almost all significant trust and brokerage companies in Canada. They also started their own mutual fund and insurance businesses. As a result, Canadian banks broadened out to become supermarkets of financial services."
 * "After large bank mergers were ruled out by the federal government, some Canadian banks turned to international expansion, particularly in various U.S. markets such as banking and brokerage."
 * "Two other notable developments in Canadian banking were the launch of ING Bank of Canada (which relies mostly on a branchless banking model), and the slow emergence of non-bank mortgage origination companies."

I have tentatively removed them until RS are found because they now lack context.Oceanflynn (talk) 18:45, 13 April 2022 (UTC)