Chief Operating Officer / Canada
Three decisions that cost money or accepted a risk
- Credit union assets
- C$2.2bn
- 31 December 2025; member-owned
- Members served
- 96,000
- 37% choose French for service
- Operations colleagues led
- 352
- 21 branches, contact centre, fraud and payments
Decisions & consequences
01Hiring bilingual advisers instead of buying an English-first overflow service
Between January 2023 and December 2025, about 3,900 fixed-rate residential mortgages totalling C$640 million reached maturity at Brayloche. Many had been arranged when rates were far lower, so renewal conversations were longer and more anxious than usual. In spring 2023 our contact centre showed the strain unevenly. English-language callers waited 3.8 minutes on average; French-language callers waited 9.5 minutes, and 21% hung up before an answer, compared with 9% in English.
Our chief financial officer proposed an overflow contract with a third-party contact centre at about C$380,000 a year. It would answer in English and offer interpretation for French callers. The cost was attractive and the vendor could start within six weeks. I argued that a member renewing a mortgage at a much higher payment should not explain her household budget through an interpreter. Josée Doucenval, who runs the contact centre, shared that concern but doubted we could supervise new home-based staff well.
I recommended hiring eleven bilingual advisers living in the province's northeast, working from home with a language premium, at about C$910,000 a year. We also began booking renewal conversations 120 days before maturity, in the member's chosen language, to spread the work. To fund the difference, I postponed an online appointment-booking project by a year, a C$260,000 saving our digital team had wanted badly. The chief executive supported the recommendation, and the board's risk committee asked for monthly results by language.
By the fourth quarter of 2023 the French wait averaged 4.1 minutes and abandonment had fallen to 10%; the English wait was 3.5 minutes. In 2023, 89% of maturing balances renewed with us, against 83% in 2022, although rates and competitors' offers also influenced that figure and I do not attribute it to staffing alone.
What I would do differently: I hired before reshaping the schedule. For six weeks the new advisers were overstaffed in the mornings and short in the late afternoon, when renewal callers finished work. Fixing the schedule first would have saved money and early frustration.
Bringing overnight fraud monitoring in-house after a long weekend of losses
Over the February 2022 Family Day weekend, fraudsters used stolen online-banking credentials to send transfers from 146 members' accounts. Our card and payment processor's monitoring produced alerts, but our fraud team worked business hours and the alerts waited in a queue until Tuesday morning. Members lost C$287,000 before anyone telephoned them. We reimbursed most of it under our policy, and several members told us, fairly, that a credit union had no business being closed to fraud for three days.
I set out three options for the chief executive and the board's risk committee. Our processor offered an automated overnight tier for about C$170,000 a year: it would block suspicious payments but could not call members. Sharing a desk with two other credit unions would cost less but needed agreements on data and authority that could take a year. An in-house overnight desk of seven analysts would cost about C$590,000 a year. The chief executive initially preferred the automated tier, and our facilities manager was unhappy that I proposed deferring three branch refurbishments for a year to fund the desk.
I recommended the in-house desk combined with automated holds on the highest-risk transfers. The committee approved it in April 2022, and the desk began in July after training and new procedures for calling members overnight.
Annual fraud losses fell from C$1.38 million in 2021 to C$640,000 in 2023 and C$590,000 in 2025, while fraud attempts across the industry kept rising. The desk now makes about 2,300 overnight calls a year. In its first year we received 41 complaints about calls at night and many more about cards held for genuine purchases. Since 2025 the desk also covers two smaller credit unions under a service agreement that recovers about C$180,000 a year.
What I would do differently: in the first month analysts could place holds but not release them, so members whose transfers were genuine waited until morning. I would define release authority before the desk opens, and I would have started talks with peer credit unions earlier.
Letting branches pay out cash during a storm outage
In late September 2022 a post-tropical storm cut power and telecommunications to nine of our 21 branches, some for four days. Cash machines in those communities stopped working, and our procedure said tellers could not pay withdrawals without a live connection to the banking system. Members needed cash for generators, fuel and groceries, and several fishing and farm businesses needed to pay crews. On the first morning, branch managers were turning members away from locked doors with handwritten notes.
I proposed that affected branches pay offline withdrawals of up to C$400 per member per day, with identity checked against photo identification, two staff signatures on paper vouchers and a daily telephone report to me. Our head of internal audit objected that members could withdraw at two branches on the same day, and our risk manager worried about impersonation where staff did not know the member. Both concerns were valid. I accepted the exposure, asked branches to telephone each other before paying anyone they did not recognise, and informed the chief executive and the risk committee chair that morning.
Over four days, staff paid 1,640 offline withdrawals totalling C$538,000. When systems returned, reconciliation found 19 accounts overdrawn by a total of C$7,900, mostly through duplicate withdrawals. After follow-up, C$1,850 remained unrecovered. I reported that figure to the risk committee alongside the decision that produced it.
The outage also changed investment. Equipping all 21 branches with generators and satellite links would have cost about C$2.4 million. I recommended C$810,000 for seven branches chosen for their isolation and their members' reliance on cash, and named the fourteen left without protection. The board approved that narrower plan.
What I would do differently: I made a reasonable decision by telephone at six in the morning, but it should never have needed improvising. I would have written the offline limits, approval rules and French and English scripts in advance, obtained the board's approval and rehearsed them before the storm season.