ING Direct Public Accountability Statment | Tangerine Bank | Discussion forum

Hi Greg,

Sorry I've not been able to reply to as many of your posts, and other peoples' posts, of late. I'll try to get them over the next week or so.

I'm glad you pointed out "ING Bank of Canada"'s (soon to be "Tangerine Bank" [in English] and "Banque Tangerine" [in French], effective May 9th) Annual Public Accountability Statement. I thought I was the only "bank nerd" and "data junkie" that cared about these sort of things. When I first read the Public Accountability Statement you pointed to, I was a bit dismayed that it wasn't a fancy multi-page report and was instead only two-page spread. Generally, after a bank gets acquired by a larger bank, their data released in these annual Public Accountability Statements gets absorbed into the parent company's statement/"Corporate Responsibility Report" and that parent company mentioned for which subsidiaries it is applicable. When Scotiabank acquired "ING Bank of Canada" in November 2012, the ING 2012 Public Accountability Statement report was a nice, glossy multi-page report and I got a bit excited. Alas, if you look in the 2013 Scotiabank Corporate Responsibility Report, on pages 33 and 34, you'll notice the same two-page spread for "ING Bank of Canada". So, it seems the inevitable loss of data.

If there's some comfort, at least they kept the "orange" branding on pages 33 and 34 of the Scotiabank CRR! It also allows for easy "take out" and publishing on the separate "tangerine.ca" website.

At any rate, there is more detailed financial information on any Canadian chartered bank, trust company, insurance company or pension plan via the OSFI website (note: does not work in Google Chrome, had to use Internet Explorer). There you can get quarterly financial statements (or annual balance sheets) and "ING Bank of Canada" is basically already contributing over 10% (between 10-15% by my calculations) of Scotiabank's Canadian Banking business line net income of 2.3 billion (I think ING Bank of Canada had between $250 and $300 million in net income, assuming they paid 100% of those earnings up to the parent company in the form of common share dividends and didn't retain any earnings for capital planning purposes). That's impressive.

I used to like PC Financial's model of being totally integrated into CIBC as essentially a "branch transit" of CIBC. The bad thing with that, though, we don't get to see the specific contribution of PC Financial to CIBC's earnings (it reportedly has more customers than Tangerine, but is not nearly as profitable, maybe half as profitable I'm guessing?). That said, their "pavilions" may be somewhat subsidized in that maybe Loblaw Companies does not charge them rent for the small square footage the "pavilion" takes place since, presumably, the more PC Financial customers they can attract will spend more of their paycheques in Loblaw-owned stores and Loblaw will benefit from the PC Points data analytics. Both are decent models.

ING's Public Accountability Statement is misleading this year. They actually decommissioned three ABMs at their old 111 Gordon Baker Road head office building (a leased premise) in north Toronto (which is over 99% vacated now).

One interesting thing about BMO's Public Accountability Statement: their "Cash ATMs" (they're seeking to grow their ATM network by some 30-40% over several years by adding off-site cash dispensing ATMs) grew substantially, with a major win at all of the Rexall and I think the Metro stores in Canada. They've also added ATMs in all Sobeys-owned stores and, presumably over time, will replace CIBC in all of the Safeway stores in Canada too now that Sobeys owns Canada Safeway Ltd. CIBC, meanwhile, may fall to fourth largest full- and cash-service ATM network (after perennial "big boy" RBC Royal Bank, Scotiabank/Tangerine and BMO). TD Canada Trust, meanwhile, may have a slightly larger branch network than Scotiabank and BMO but since it's retreated from having off-site "Green Machines", is now the fifth largest ATM network in Canada - ahead of only the credit-union-backed Acculink and The EXCHANGE ATM Network.

Cheers,
Doug