Canadian Banker articles from July 1999

Canadian Banker archives from July 1999

THE CHARTERED BANKS OF CANADA.
July 1, 1999... Bank of Montreal P.O. Box 6002 Montreal, Quebec h2y 3s8 Scotiabank 44 King Street West Toronto, Ontario m5h 1h1 TD Bank P.O. Box 1, Toronto-Dominion Centre Toronto, Ontario m5k 1a2 National Bank of Canada 600 de la Gauchetiere West...

Bot and sold.
July 1, 1999... Smart "shop bots" are among the electronic tools that are set to transform the way business works, according to a new study. One of the industries that will see the greatest change: financial services The Internet is much more than just...

Working at the edge : There's something new every day in the job of supervising a high-tech services department.
July 1, 1999... Steve Gesner doesn't "do" lunch -- at least not regularly. Instead, the 44-year-old vice-president of interactive services for TD Bank spends most noon hours riding an exercise bike at a fitness club near his Toronto office. "It's the only...

They said it.
July 1, 1999... Most of the media commentary about the financial-services policy proposals announced by Finance Minister Paul Martin in June was refreshingly free of the bank-bashing rhetoric that has characterized so much press coverage of financial-services...

CEOS WANT MORE FROM IT.
July 1, 1999... Corporate CEOs increasingly view information technology as a key strategic tool, but are disappointed in IT achievements, according to a recent global survey conducted by the London School of Economics for the management consulting firm Compass...

ICR CHEQUE READER.
July 1, 1999... Cheques, deposit slips, application forms and other documents with handwritten and printed information can be processed automatically with A2iA Corp.'s CheckReader software. It uses intelligent character recognition (ICR), which recognizes...

FRONT-OFFICE SYSTEM.
July 1, 1999... Princeton Financial Systems has introduced a major new product suite for investment professionals. FrontLine is described as a real-time, high-performance and highly scalable system designed to support the front office and enable...

WIRELESS E-COMMERCE.
July 1, 1999... The AirPac wireless solution from Sierra Wireless provides secure cellular connectivity and protocol conversion for transaction-based applications such as ABMs and point-of-sale networks.

E-BUSINESS SOLUTION.
July 1, 1999... PeopleSoft eMarketplace is a new application for business-to-business and business-to-consumer e-commerce. It provides a multi-channel solution including sales, customer self-service, marketing, order fulfillment and closed-loop analytics.

BACK-OFFICE PLATFORM.
July 1, 1999... At its recent FinNet '99 conference, Microsoft announced that in the past year more than 300 financial institutions worldwide have adopted the Microsoft BackOffice platform for administration of Internet and home-banking offerings.

CASH DISPENSERS.
July 1, 1999... Triton Systems Inc. says its smaller-footprint off-premises ABMs were deployed in 1,500 locations in its first full year of operations in Canada, making it the number one manufacturer of cash dispensers in this country.

A book full of facts about banking.
July 1, 1999... The latest edition of Canadian Bank Facts has been released by the Canadian Bankers Association. One of 15 free booklets published by the CBA as part of its Building a Better Understanding communications program, Canadian Bank Facts takes...

Debit cards are now as popular as cash with Canadians.
July 1, 1999... More than 280,000 retailers in Canada now offer Interac Direct Payment (IDP), according to the Interac Association. That number has doubled since 1995, when 130,000 merchants offered the debit-card option. "The popularity of IDP continues...

CPA plans to certify payments on the Internet.
July 1, 1999... The Canadian Payments Association intends to become a root Certification Authority (CA) for payments over the Internet in Canada. As part of its mandate to plan the evolution of the national payments system, the CPA is taking a leadership role...

MORE EXAMPLES OF HOW NOT TO LAND A JOB.
July 1, 1999... Every now and then the placement firm Accountemps sends us another collection of real-life bloopers that have appeared in resumes, job applications and cover letters -- errors the company says, in a polite understatement, may have a detrimental...

Companies like the euro in theory more than practice.
July 1, 1999... Even though they gave an enthusiastic welcome to Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), with 90% of companies supporting the decision to join, European businesses aren't rushing into full-scale adoption of the euro, according to a Dun & Bradstreet...

YOUNG ACHIEVERS HONOURED IN B.C.
July 1, 1999... Selectron Imaging Inc. won the top award as some of B.C.'s best young entrepreneurs gathered recently in Vancouver for Junior Achievement's fourth annual Student Venture of the Year awards. Sponsored by CIBC, the awards were created to...

NATIONAL BANK EXPANDS PROGRAM FOR EDUCATION.
July 1, 1999... The National Bank University Program has been launched in Ontario and western Canada. First established in Quebec in 1996, the program is a continuing education initiative designed specifically for National Bank employees with the co-operation...

CDIC WEB SITE NOW HAS A CALCULATOR.
July 1, 1999... Canada Deposit Insurance Corp. has introduced an Interactive Deposit Insurance Calculator on its Web site (www.cdic.ca). The calculator guides depositors through a series of questions designed to calculate deposit insurance coverage for their...

MAKING OFFICE SPACE WORK.
July 1, 1999... A free facility-management consultation service for Canadian financial and legal organizations is now being offered by the Toronto commercial interior design firm McGregor Charbonneau. The firm says it has developed a new approach that allows...

A GUIDEBOOK TO COMMITTEES.
July 1, 1999... In his new book, Taking It to the Hill: The Complete Guide to Appearing before (and Surviving) Parliamentary Committees, David McInnes, former director of government relations for the Canadian Bankers Association, explains the practical tools...

FALSE ECONOMY.
July 1, 1999... A 61-year-old man in Bonn, Germany, who withdrew his life savings of more than $90,000 from one bank to put in another bank that promised higher rates has lost it all. He apparently put the money in a bag on the roof of his car, then drove away...

SLOWESCAPE.
July 1, 1999... Two Tacoma, Wash., men have been charged with robbing a Key Bank branch. They fled in a huge, unwieldy mobile home which became trapped in noon-hour traffic several blocks from the crime scene. Police on foot caught up to the vehicle and...

THOSE TRICKY TAXMEN.
July 1, 1999... The General Accounting Office in Washington, D.C., reports its auditors have discovered that Internal Revenue Service employees have stolen at least $8 million in taxes over one 30-month period they investigated. One employee changed a...

ON THE TRAIL OF THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES GANG.
July 1, 1999... Husband-and-wife team Steve and Michelle Chambers have pleaded guilty in Charlotte, N.C., to stealing $17 million from Loomis, Fargo & Co., an armoured car firm, in 1997. What led to their capture was getting rid of their huge pile of cash. ...

New rules for foreign bank branches are now in effect.
July 1, 1999... Bill C-67, federal legislation that allows foreign banks to establish specialized, commercially focused branches in Canada, came into force on June 28, 1999. Previously, foreign banks operating in Canada were required to establish separate...

A matter of choice : How aggregators help consumers find the financial institutions they want to deal with.
July 1, 1999... The Internet used to be about information, about access, about getting data when you needed it. There were projects (and still are, of course) to put the Great Books on line, so if you needed a copy of The Mill on the Floss at midnight, it...

Keeping it personal.
July 1, 1999... You might think the popularity of electronic banking means that one day customers will no longer need face-to-face service from their banks. You'd be wrong RON Buffett recalls how the introduction of debit cards affected customers of the...

Puzzled about productivity?
July 1, 1999... You're not alone. Even Statistics Canada got its productivity data wrong recently. But while it may be confusing, it's vitally important. With the federal deficit tamed, a new problem has arisen to captivate economic decision-makers:...

Productivity prescriptions for Canada.
July 1, 1999... Here are some prescriptions being offered by bankers for the countrys productivity ills. * Acknowledge the problem. The first step, according to Joshua Mendelsohn, CIBCs senior vice-president and chief economist, is to admit we have a...

Do Canadians gamble? You bet.
July 1, 1999... Most Canadians indulge in some form of gambling, but in most cases it's just a matter of buying lottery tickets. Government lottery tickets were purchased in 74% of Canadian households in 1997, according to Statistics Canada. The average...

Seamless service for the wealthy client?
July 1, 1999... The major banks are taking out their positions in the competitive wealth-management market by integrating the services they offer affluent Last January, at Bank of Montreal's Private Client Service Centre in Edmonton, Senior Manager Doug...

Ottawa unveils its plans for financial services.
July 1, 1999... The government says its new policy proposals will allow financial institutions to evolve, preserve the system's soundness, foster competition and benefit consumers. But some observers are not impressed For several years, financial...

CBA chairman points out several contradictions in financial policy.
July 1, 1999... In a speech a few weeks prior to the formal release of the government's financial-services policy proposals, Leon Courville, chairman of the Canadian Bankers Association, told the Ottawa-Carleton Board of Trade that three fundamental...

Getting it together : Banks are working with other key industries to resolve Y2K issues.
July 1, 1999... As Y2K preparations continue, the industries on which Canadians depend have announced continual progress in analyzing, testing and refitting their systems so they'll perform without a hitch through the new year. Electricity providers...

There's something about money.
July 1, 1999... Young people today are ill-prepared to make the financial decisions that await them when they leave high school. The CBA has launched a Web site to help them Young Canadians now have a handy way of learning how to manage their personal...

Here's something about money.
July 1, 1999... One of the many features of the CBA's new Web site for young Canadians is a multiple-choice "Pop Quiz" designed to help users measure their financial knowledge. Here's a sampling of questions from the quiz. We won't give the answers because as...