Few people under the age of
40 could take the reins of a federally chartered bank, but Jason Farris, the new president and CEO of Vancouver-based Citizens Bank of Canada, is no ordinary executive.

There probably isn’t another head banker in Canada who is publishing a book about hockey this fall. Or one who produced a short film last year. Or one who, despite a varied and accomplished employment resumé, never worked in a bank before taking the top job.

“I prize diversity. I had a father who said, ‘Keep as many doors open as you can’,” says the 39-year-old Vancouver native, who spent seven years as a senior executive at a financial services software firm. “For me, much the appeal of this job is that it builds on what I’ve seen before but it is completely different. I don’t like to do the same thing twice.”

Farris’s eclectic interests seem to dovetail nicely with the non-traditional Citizens Bank, a nine-year-old subsidiary of Vancity Credit Union.

Apart from Citizens Bank’s two service centres, it is a branchless operation, with a core online presence, a 300-employee call centre and $1.7 billion in assets. It has a strong corporate social responsibility mandate and places emphasis on accessibility, friendly service and a “plain language” approach to dealing with its customers. It also tends to offer better term-deposit and mortgage rates than the Big Six banks.

Citizens Bank is also at a crossroads. Unlike in 1997, when it was launched as the country’s first “virtual bank,” all major lenders today have a robust online presence. The entrance into the market of players such as President’s Choice Financial and ING Canada, which also provide consumers with largely branchless banking at friendlier rates, makes Citizens Bank’s business model less remarkable than when it began.

So, when previous Citizens Bank CEO Ian Warner was bumped up to chief operating officer of parent Vancity, Citizens Bank’s board began looking for someone who could leverage the bank’s strengths and spread the word to consumers. Ferris got the nod in July.

“I was absolutely brought in for reframing the opportunity, to make it something stronger, something more compelling. And then being able to attract the talent and the energies to the cause,” says Farris, who has both marketing and operational experience on his resumé.

“The capital structure of the bank, the machinery and the compliance is as solid as you’d ever want to see it,” he says. “Now the question is: how do you dial that up and take a uniquely Canadian understated little gem to a wider audience?”

Farris is brief on his specific plans, which is no surprise for a CEO on the job for such a short period. He says, however, that a key to the growth strategy will be to maximize the bank’s strengths: its built-in cost advantages; online financial services experience; a reputation for accessibility and transparency; and, perhaps most important, its commitment to its corporate social responsibility mandate.

As part of that commitment, the bank reports that it doesn’t do business with companies that manufacture military equipment, sell tobacco, test on animals or that have a poor environmental record, among other things. Citizens Bank also offers its customers credit cards for which a portion of all purchases go toward charities such as Oxfam or Amnesty International. The bank has also made a commitment to become carbon-neutral by 2010.

Farris says Citizens Bank is the only real choice for consumers who want to bank at an institution that puts its ethical policies front and centre.

But leveraging all the bank’s strong suits is the big challenge, he adds: “I think the key is driving the depth of relationship with communities of interest within our customer base and then trying to extend greater links between the areas. We haven’t taken advantage of everything that has been built here.”

Farris, who has two children — Jane, 8, and Owen, 6 — with his wife, Sarah, says he isn’t daunted by the challenge of running a bank.

“Fear is sometimes a good motivator. But you need to have fear with the confidence and knowledge that you can get out at the other end,” he says.

A desire to try something new has been a constant theme in Farris’s career.

Armed with undergraduate degrees in physics from the University of British Columbia and in political science from the University of Toronto, Farris began his career with MacDonald Dettwiler & Associates, a Richmond, B.C.-based software and systems engineering firm. He started as a project manager but, by the time he left in 1997, had become head of operational accounting and IT management. In 1991, he took an 18-month sabbatical to earn an MBA at the MIT Sloan School of Management in Boston.

@page_break@“At MDA, I got really great exposure to what ‘world-class’ meant. It was a leader in its field, in terms of doing satellite ground stations, air traffic control systems,” Farris says. “It wasn’t the flashiest job for a newly minted MBA, but it was a great experience.”

In 1998, Farris made the jump to Fincentric Corp., a financial services software company also based in Richmond, for which he began as vice president of services, responsible for the operational side of the business. “It was a mess, a turnaround situation that a couple of us went into,” Farris says. “I’m very proud of what we did there. We set up processes and procedures that we could walk away from.”

In 2003, Farris transferred divisions, becoming Fincentric’s vice president, marketing, and leading a staff of 30 in reframing the firm’s branding strategy — especially when it came to penetrating the U.S. market.

The Fincentric experience will be useful in his new role, Farris says: “I got to work with a number of Internet banks from around the world, each pursuing different models, from large conglomerates to raw start-ups.”

Farris says he left Fincentric in 2004 because he felt he had accomplished what he wanted to at the firm. “I didn’t leave knowing what I wanted to do,” he says. “I just felt I kind of wanted to do something else.”

For the next few years, Farris lived the life of a Renaissance man, dabbling in a number of business ventures and interests, including setting up and managing an investment fund and doing some management consultancy services for the Jim Pattison Group.

Farris also set up a book and production company called circaNow Productions, through which he has released some of his personal projects.

One was a short film entitled Chaconne in G minor: composta da Vitali?, which was broadcast on the Bravo! Network last year. “The film deals with a little-known piece of classical music, a violin and organ concerto written in the 1700s that I’ve loved since I was a boy. It has been lost to repertoire, and I always wanted to do something with it.”

The other projects are a pair of self-published hockey books. Hockey Play-by-Play: Around the NHL with Jim Robson, about the famed Vancouver sports broadcaster, came out in 2005. Farris says he has sold about 5,000 copies, mostly online.

The second book is a biography of 1960s and ’70s-era goaltender Cesare Maniago entitled Hail Cesare: Trail through the NHL, which is being published this fall.

“I think it was Ken Dryden who said, ‘A Canadian boy’s hero is whoever was goalie for his hometown team when he was nine’,” Farris says. “Well, when I was nine going on 10, Cesare Maniago was traded from Minnesota to Vancouver. Plus, I think Maniago embodies that whole era.”

What brought Farris back into the regular working world?

He replies that, when he heard about the opportunity at Citizens Bank, the job description seemed written for him.

“It was one of those situations in which, as I met the board, as I met the management team, it felt righter and righter all the way along,” he says. “It seemed too compelling an opportunity not to really give it a good, strong kick at the can.” IE