The appointments behind my judgement

Mandate

I was appointed to strengthen the bank's funding mix and operating accountability while preserving its commercial customer relationships.

Outcomes

• Reduced the twenty largest depositor groups from 38% to 24% of customer deposits between December 2022 and June 2026.
• Brought connected commercial exposure down from C$1.35 billion to C$980 million through maturities and selective refinancing.
• Required observed payment-recovery exercises; the repeat exercise produced a consistent customer message in thirty-one minutes against ninety-four minutes initially.

Decisions in context

I inherited a bank with strong local relationships and uneven visibility of the dependencies behind them. My first priority was to connect treasury's funding view with commercial teams' understanding of customer ownership and behaviour. The resulting decisions were deliberately costly in some areas: we declined exceptional deposit pricing, restrained incremental lending to connected borrowers and diverted service investment towards recovery work. I report those costs to the board alongside the risk measures. My executive team is expected to explain where a policy creates a difficult customer conversation and what support colleagues need to handle it. I remain accountable for the whole balance sheet, rather than attributing an uncomfortable outcome to the function that prepared the paper. The current phase is about maintaining that discipline after the most visible programmes have finished and their temporary project teams have returned to ordinary responsibilities.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; I am discussing a limited external board contribution with employer clearance.

Concurrent appointment

The executive directorship accompanies the chief executive appointment.

Mandate

I joined to make service execution consistent across regional branches without removing local ownership of customer relationships.

Outcomes

• Introduced one unresolved-work register across 62 branches and central operations.
• Reduced median case resolution from 4.8 to 2.1 business days over eighteen months.
• Cut cases older than ten business days from 17% to 6%, with reopened requests reported separately.

Decisions in context

The operating remit included customer servicing, payments operations, property and procurement, with technology delivered through a separate executive colleague. That boundary made agreement on shared outcomes essential. I began with a sample of unresolved customer requests and traced each hand-off rather than commissioning a broad transformation programme. The cases revealed duplicated approvals, inconsistent completion rules and a tendency to rely on personal escalation. We introduced a common register and trained managers to treat aged work as an operating responsibility, not an embarrassment to be removed from a report. I retained branch discretion where local knowledge improved the decision, but required a visible owner when work crossed teams. The role taught me how easily a sound commercial promise can become unreliable through small administrative omissions. It also prepared me to challenge investment papers that described new capability without explaining who would operate it after launch.

Reason for the move

Promoted to chief executive following the board's succession process.

Mandate

I was recruited to expand commercial coverage while bringing origination and servicing onto a common standard of completion.

Outcomes

• Reduced documentation exceptions from 640 to 185 files during a six-month correction programme.
• Deferred two regional launches, accepting an estimated C$3.4 million reduction in near-term revenue against the original plan.
• Introduced a facility-establishment measure that required operating conditions to be complete before recognition in the commercial dashboard.

Decisions in context

This appointment put the tension between commercial ambition and operating capacity directly within my responsibilities. Our specialist teams understood equipment and borrower cash cycles well, yet servicing did not always receive complete information at the point of handover. I initially treated the backlog as a process issue. Reviewing individual files showed that sales incentives and regional launch commitments were also contributing. I postponed expansion and assigned experienced commercial staff to work with servicing on the correction. The decision required me to defend lower short-term income to the chief executive and to explain to my own team why approval was not the final measure of success. We resumed growth in stages after the backlog and incoming exception rate had improved. I left with a firmer view that functional leaders should carry the cost of correcting weaknesses created partly by their own measures.

Reason for the move

Accepted a broader bank-wide operating remit at Fennervale Commercial Bank.

Mandate

I took responsibility for a regional customer portfolio and for the quality of its growth through a difficult credit cycle.

Outcomes

• Reduced the largest ten connected borrower groups from 29% to 22% of regional commitments over three years.
• Established quarterly joint customer reviews between relationship and credit teams for 110 complex groups.
• Maintained annual customer retention above 91% during the final two years while narrowing new property-related lending.

Decisions in context

I moved from credit oversight into a role where I had to earn business and develop bankers as well as question proposals. The change was useful and occasionally uncomfortable. It is easier to identify a weak assumption than to build a commercially credible alternative for the team whose plan depends on it. I worked with relationship managers to find customers whose cash generation we understood and whose needs matched our capacity. During the later part of the appointment, I resisted an expansion into distant property lending, where our local knowledge was limited. We redirected effort towards existing commercial sectors and accepted a smaller pipeline. I learnt to explain portfolio boundaries before a promising transaction reached its final meeting. That gave colleagues time to pursue other business and reduced the impression that credit discipline arrived only when their work was almost complete.

Reason for the move

Moved to a chief commercial role with wider responsibility for distribution and servicing design.

Mandate

I joined to improve the bank's view of connected commercial exposures and the quality of information available between annual reviews.

Outcomes

• Established a shared dependency review covering 74 borrower groups in construction-linked supply chains.
• Reduced overdue annual credit reviews from 19% to 8% within two years.
• Introduced a monthly exception discussion that separated missing information from deteriorating borrower performance.

Decisions in context

My team monitored a portfolio that looked more diversified in the reporting system than it did in the local economy. We began joining information about customer ownership, major contracts and shared trading dependencies. The work required conversations with relationship managers who knew facts that were absent from formal files. I was careful not to treat that knowledge as automatically reliable; we recorded the source, requested supporting evidence and made uncertainty visible. Some early connections proved less significant than we expected, while others changed the questions asked at renewal. I also learnt to distinguish an incomplete review from a credit deterioration. Combining the two into a single exception total encouraged hurried paperwork without improving judgement. The appointment gave me experience of managing analysts, presenting disagreement respectfully and deciding which information gaps justified a change in lending posture.

Reason for the move

Promoted into regional corporate banking leadership to combine portfolio judgement with commercial responsibility.

Mandate

I supported lending decisions through cash-flow analysis, file preparation and verification of borrower information.

Outcomes

• Completed analytical reviews for 46 commercial borrowers during the final year.
• Reconciled inventory and receivables exceptions across a C$18 million distribution-sector review sample.
• Helped reduce median analyst file-preparation time from nine to seven working days without removing review steps.

Decisions in context

This was an apprenticeship in asking a useful second question. I prepared financial analysis, reviewed receivables schedules and accompanied lending officers on customer visits. I did not approve facilities and do not present the lending team's decisions as my own. My contribution was to make the evidence easier to inspect and to identify discrepancies before a file reached the approval meeting. A distributor's apparently sound ledger taught me to ask who was actually able to pay and when. A separate inventory review showed how quickly assumptions became stale when a business changed its product mix. I learnt to write short credit notes that distinguished observed facts from management explanations. The experience also gave me respect for colleagues who could maintain a customer relationship while asking uncomfortable questions, a skill I continued to develop as my own responsibilities expanded.

Reason for the move

Accepted a portfolio-management appointment with team leadership and a broader monitoring remit.