TORONTO — TD Bank says it is reviewing concerns about its sales practices in light of reports that some employees allegedly broke the law in order to meet sales targets and keep their jobs.
"As we have done in the past with matters of such importance, we will be relying on our board as well as the objective advice from a leading professional services firm to make sure we really test ourselves," CEO Bharat Masrani said during the bank's annual shareholder meeting Thursday.
Masrani said he has been speaking with TD employees across the country since the CBC reported that unnamed bank employees alleged they used aggressive, and in some cases illegal, sales practices.
"While we have sales goals to help manage our business, people behaving unethically in order to achieve these goals would be inconsistent with who we are as an institution, and I don't believe we have a widespread problem of that type of behaviour," Masrani said.
Masrani said the bank received "a few hundred complaints" last year regarding its sales practices that were escalated.
Less than 100 of those complaints affecting customers had compliance concerns, and all of them were investigated and addressed, Masrani said.
The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada has launched an investigation into business practices among federally regulated financial sector following the reports.
