Canada’s largest seniors’ advocacy group calls out big banks for inaction on report

Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto-Dominion Bank and Bank of Montreal buildings in the financial district in Toronto. Photo by Andrew Lahodynskyj/The Canadian Press files

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Canada’s big banks are “not interested” in putting clients’ financial security ahead of profits by addressing “predatory” sales practices at their branches, says the head of the country’s largest advocacy group for seniors.

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Anthony Quinn, chief executive of the Canadian Association of Retired Persons (CARP), is calling out the banks for inaction following a regulatory review of “the sales culture and environment within five bank-affiliated mutual fund dealers” in Ontario. “It’s going to take regulators and likely legislators to make the change because we know just how much influence the banks have on our lives in Canada,” Quinn said.

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Quinn said he is speaking out after trading letters with the industry trade group Canadian Bankers Association (CBA) about some of the findings published in a July 2025 report by the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) and the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO). The OSC regulates the province’s capital markets, while CIRO is a self-regulatory body overseeing investment dealers, mutual fund dealers and trading activity on the country’s equity and debt markets.

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Their joint review was initially prompted by a 2024 CBC Marketplace investigation into the “enormous sales pressure” bank branch financial advisers face, which they said leads to selling potentially unsuitable products to customers.

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Quinn said he shared CBA’s reply on CARP’s website last week because “the indication, as I read the letter, was that the status quo was satisfactory to the banks.”

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The report is based on responses to a voluntary, anonymous survey of 2,863 mutual fund advisers about their perspectives on the sales environment, sales pressure, range of products and knowledge in specific areas of their jobs. The respondents work in bank branches at one of five dealers: Royal Mutual Funds Inc., Scotia Securities Inc., BMO Investments Inc., TD Investment Services Inc. and CIBC Securities Inc.

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The regulators pointed to a “key observation” from the survey: 25 per cent of mutual fund dealers said clients were recommended products or services that were not in their interests at least “sometimes.”

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The report also noted that “representatives’ experiences of sales pressure are pervasive” and said most agree that the use of scorecards to set targets and measure performance metrics may influence their job behaviours.

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“Collectively, these factors may pose risks that Canadian retail investors’ interests are not being sufficiently prioritized,” the report said.

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OSC and CIRO suggested the five bank-affiliated dealers “carefully consider” what their employees reported in the survey, assess how compensation, incentives and performance metrics affect their sales environment and make “changes and enhancements” where needed.

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In November, Quinn sent a letter to CBA chief executive Anthony Ostler raising the report’s findings. The CBA represents more than 60 domestic and foreign banks operating in Canada.

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“These are systemic failures that disproportionately harm older Canadians, many of whom have been loyal to the same bank for 50, or even 60-plus years,” Quinn said in his letter.