The new head of the Canadian Bankers Association says her main goal is to improve the public image of the banking sector and build stronger bridges to government. Such success is vital if the CBA hopes to achieve major policy goals that have so far proven elusive.

“Everybody loves to bash the banks from time to time, but I think we have a fantastically good industry with a great track record, admired internationally,” says Nancy Hughes Anthony, who became president and CEO of the CBA at the end of May. “Those are some of the things we can talk about an awful lot more.”

In Hughes Anthony, the CBA brings aboard an experienced and polished veteran of the public and private sectors to replace Raymond Protti, who has led the association since June 1996 and had announced his plans to step down last September. The CBA hopes the contacts Hughes Anthony, 57, has made in her career, including more than eight years as head of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and a stint as a deputy minister in the federal government, will come in handy in furthering bank interests.

In the past several years, the CBA has been a lot like a high-payroll hockey team that somehow manages to lose the big games. Whether it’s the failure to get Ottawa to approve bank mergers or the inability to persuade government to grant expanded insurance powers, Canada’s banks have had to endure the long walk back to the locker room without the key victories.

“There is more work to do on the political side,” Hughes Anthony says. “We always try to work with MPs of every political party, in terms of talking about the benefits of the banking industry. We could probably do more.”

While heading the chamber of commerce, Hughes Anthony travelled extensively across Canada to cities and towns with local chambers, trying to build bonds and strengthen the whole. At the CBA, she also hopes to build such grassroots ties. After all, there are banks in every community across Canada, she says, which means they merit a stronger national voice.

“I worked very hard developing credibility for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. That’s one of the reasons I came [to the CBA], because of its credibility and because the work it does is very, very strong,” Hughes Anthony says.

Much of the most important work done by the CBA with government is technical, behind the scenes and unlikely to make newspaper headlines, she says. But it results in an efficient and reliable banking system that Canadians implicitly trust, even if they sometimes take it for granted.

“There’s a lot more complexity to this business than Canadians understand,” she says. “Perhaps we can do a better job communicating how good we are, and getting some input on how to improve.”

Part of the problem with representing the banks is they tend to be a magnet for criticism, an issue that Hughes Anthony will no doubt face on a regular basis.

In January, the federal New Democratic Party called on the government to introduce legislation to ban bank fees at ATM machines. The outcry made the front pages across the country, and led Finance Minister Jim Flaherty to meet with top executives from the big banks. Ultimately, little was done and the issue fizzled.

“When we checked with our member banks, we found Canadians weren’t phoning up their banks to complain about ATM fees,” Hughes Anthony says. “This was largely a politically driven and media-supported exercise.”

She says the ATM episode made Canadians reconsider their banking habits. “A lot of people, for example, have learned to pay attention to that little question on the machine that asks, ‘Would you like to pay this fee, yes or no,’ when they are at a bar at two in the morning at a white-label machine.”

Hughes Anthony says coming into the job in the summer, a downtime in the industry, will give her the opportunity to visit senior executives of the 54 member banks, find out their priorities and find the best way to go meet these priorities. Until she is finished with the consultation process, she won’t be able to draw up a strategy plan.

The banks’ wish list will probably be at the top of her agenda. One priority will surely be the ongoing issue of mergers among the big banks, a matter that the federal government says is not currently being considered.

@page_break@“Mergers and acquisitions are a recognized business practice,” she says. “The same as — I don’t know — partnerships, alliances, whatever, that business should be allowed to take advantage of.”

Another key issue is giving banks the right to market and perhaps even sell insurance through their branch networks. “It makes sense to allow consumers to make up their own minds on where they want to go to get their insurance products, and let the market work,” she says.

“There are some political realities that seem to drive past and current governments [on insurance],” Hughes Anthony adds. For years, the insurance industry has successfully lobbied the federal government to maintain the status quo when it comes to the retail sale of insurance.

Hughes Anthony says regulatory issues will be a huge part of her discussions with government.

“There’s a new mood about how banks are regulated, not only in Canada but internationally,” she says. “This whole issue of principles-based regulation is something upon which we’re already in dialogue with the federal government. I think that’s going to change the way in which banks will be regulated in the future.”

Hughes Anthony says modernizing regulation will be key for Canadian banks to keep costs low and compete internationally. “There’s huge competitive pressure for managing capital around the world,” she says. “That’s something our politicians are slowly understanding — the lightning speed at which capital can move around.”

Easing the regulatory environment may also make it more conducive for foreign banks to enter Canada, Hughes Anthony says. She served on the board of directors of HSBC Bank Canada, the country’s largest foreign-owned bank, for two and a half years until taking the CBA role.

Canada’s banking sector has seen a great deal of change in the past several years, and the trend will continue. “People now demand an efficiency from their banks they would never have dreamed of 20 years ago,” Hughes Anthony says.

In the future, she adds, the banks’ relationship with government on key integrity and security issues such as identity theft, money laundering and terrorism financing will become even more important: “These weren’t even on the radar screen a few decades ago.”

Hughes Anthony is looking forward to her new job and is in the process of moving to Toronto from Ottawa. She’ll be doing a lot of travel, although perhaps not to the extent she did for the chamber of commerce. “I hope to reclaim my weekends,” says Hughes Anthony, who is married and has two children in their 20s.

“This is an opportunity,” she says, “to focus on an industry that really has an impact on the Canadian economy and on individual Canadians.” IE