IS IT ADEQUATE ENOUGH? DO THEY HAVE ENOUGH POWER?

Terry Campbell, president of the Canadian Bankers Association, said its member banks look forward to cooperating with the FCAC’s review.

“Canada’s banks will cooperate fully and constructively with the regulator ... We are confident that the banks’ strong policies, procedures, and controls are functioning well,” he said in a statement on Wednesday.

However, there were also calls for a parliamentary inquiry, with two lawmakers who sit on the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance calling for an examination of banks’ practices and the effectiveness of financial regulation, Reuters reported.

“Is it adequate enough? Do they have enough power?” asked Liberal MP RobertFalcon Ouellette, according to Reuters.

Conservative MP Dan Albas called on the FCAC and the Finance department to explain how they are responding to the concerns and to address questions around the effectiveness of regulators.

The increased scrutiny of Canada’s banks also came as the number of complaints were on the rise.

The Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments — where customer complaints are dealt with if not resolved within the bank or by a bank’s internal ombudsman — opened 290 banking-related cases in 2016, up six per cent from 273 in 2015, it said in its annual report released Wednesday.

“The upward trend can be attributed, in part, to increased consumer awareness as well as efforts by participating banks to communicate more frequently about complaint handling processes as well as OBSI as an option to resolve their disputes,” OBSI said in the report.

Sarah Bradley, its ombudsman, said however that there weren’t any complaints related to disclosure or aggressive sales practices, and the vast majority involved mortgages, fraud and customer service.

OBSI does not handle banking complaints for TD or Royal Bank of Canada, which use ADR Banking Ombuds Office.

According to ADRBO’s latest statistics, it registered 225 new complaints in 2016 from TD and RBC combined, an increase of 36 per cent from a year earlier. TD saw complaints rise from 96 to 148 in 2016, up 54 per cent.

These figures, however, don’t reflect all the complaints received by the banks.

Consumers must first approach the bank with which they have an issue, and the institution has 90 days to address those complaints.

TD’s latest ombudsman report for 2016 has not yet been released, but the office received 3,922 contacts in 2015, up from 3,086 the year before. It also opened 637 cases in 2015, up from 383 a year earlier.

In response to query about the increase in customer complaints, a spokesperson at TD said: “We help make our customers aware of how to escalate their concern if they are dissatisfied, including escalation to an external complaint body or ombudservice. The ADRBO handles all of TD’s banking complaint escalations. An important indicator for us is that the ADRBO agrees with the TD ombudsman’s findings 90 per cent of the time.”