When news of the Wells Fargo fraud/sales pumping culture hit last October, we reminded our readers, that this was not just a Wells story, but financial sector wide. (See our archive of stories here). And last week, when news of similar practices at Canada’s TD bank broke, we wrote in “Wells Fargo North”, that it was not 
just TD, but rather, “an entire industry of sales-obsessed investment firms/banks posing as “financial advisors” which have increasingly gutted households from the inside out over the past 2 decades.”
The plot thickens, as today we have a CBC report which confirms Canadian banks are all driving their staff to push credit and so called ‘investment’ products on to customers against the customers’ best interests, and all under the guise of “financial advice”. See: “We are all doing it”: Employees at Canada’s big five banks, speak out about pressure to dupe customers:
“Employees from all five of Canada’s big banks have flooded Go Public with stories of how they feel pressured to upsell, trick and even lie to customers to meet unrealistic sales targets and keep their jobs.
The deluge is fuelling multiple calls for a parliamentary inquiry, even as the banks claim they’re acting in customers’ best interests.
In nearly 1,000 emails, employees from RBC, BMO, CIBC, TD and Scotiabank locations across Canada describe the pressures to hit targets that are monitored weekly, daily and in some cases hourly.
“Management is down your throat all the time,” said a Scotiabank financial adviser. “They want you to hit your numbers and it doesn’t matter how.”
Read the whole article. If you are taking financial advice from people who work for the bank/broker/dealers you are doing so at your peril. Yes the people seem nice. But they are working for a self-obsessed, greed machine, that cares about profits not people, or the harmful effects of their recommendations on real families. It’s time to wake up.
And yes, we do need to break up the banks and separate the ferocious product/investment sales side away from the traditional deposit taking-loan making side which is backed by CIDC insurance via taxpayers. We cannot afford to continue any other way.
;
