Raymond McManus, president and CEO Laurentian Bank, says he wants to make his firm “a bank that stands out by emphasizing customer service, a bank where clients feel like they are guests.”

McManus discusses his plan at the bank’s annual general meeting of the shareholders held Thursday in Montreal.

The bank’s chief executive since August 1, 2002, McManus explained to the assembled shareholders that he intends to manage the bank in a disciplined manner with the key objective of ensuring sustained growth. “My goal is simple and clear: to make Laurentian Bank an efficient bank that is conservatively managed, that sets sound goals for itself and that emphasizes customer service. I believe that the only way for a bank of our size to differentiate itself is to provide service superior to that of our competitors.”

To reach this goal, McManus has decided to make Retail Financial Services the bank’s top priority in 2003. That translates into a double objective for the Retail Financial Services line of business: to provide better service to its clients and to increase its efficiency and profitability.

McManus said that employees are key to the implementation of Laurentian’s business plan. “Ensuring the positive development of our labour relations is very important,” he said. He also pointed out the bank and its unionized employees accepted a mediator’s recommendation to use an arbitration board to determine the content of the next collective agreement.

McManus said that, although the bank’s recent financial results are not spectacular across the board, they show several encouraging signs. The quality of assets and the BIS Tier 1 and Total capital ratios improved.