Canada banking sector needs more immigrants in order to prosper

As Canada’s population rises slightly more than 1.2 percent per year, immigration alone made up for two-thirds of that growth. Canada added 271,662 new permanent residents last year, not taking into account hundreds of thousands of temporary workers and foreign students.

According to Statistics Canada, immigration will continue driving the growth of the population in the future. These increases in numbers will account for more business for all of Canada’s major banks. All the banks are, therefore, now training their guns on how to capture the large chunk of these customers.

Since most new immigrants are digitally literate, most of them like to research and correspond with banks through their mobile devices. But online correspondence still cannot eliminate actual physical interaction, as the initial step of setting up an account requires the customer to be present in person. This allows banks to build trust among their customers by answering all questions that these new immigrants would ask.

Puneet Mann of Scotiabank said that they would like their customers to take advantage of the facilities that their bank offers, but for that, the new arrivals should know which schools they would be sending their children to, where they should buy their groceries from, what community they would want to live in, and so on. Guiding them so that they do not make mistakes while undertaking financial commitments is important, Mann added.

The immigration backdrop keeps changing continuously, as do the customers and their needs, so banks need to be agile, concluded Mann.

That is why banks in Canada are focusing on how they should be managing their new, major customers, i.e. immigrants.