Éric Provost becomes president of the Laurentian Bank

2023-10-02 23:29:25

A Quebecer takes over at the Laurentian Bank while the Montreal financial institution must restore the confidence of its customers after a computer outage that lasted several days.

The new big boss of Laurentian is Éric Provost, who was recently named group head of personal and business banking services, the institution announced in a press release on Monday. Michael Boychuk, for his part, is named chairman of the board of directors. He replaces Michael Mueller.

Mr. Provost’s “immediate” priority “will be to restore trust with the Bank’s customers and deal with the consequences of the central system outage that occurred last week.”

“We have experienced challenges recently, and the board is confident that Eric will refocus the organization on customer experience and operational efficiency. The appointment of Eric to the position of President and CEO follows his exceptional performance at the head of our business services and is part of our formal succession planning process,” noted Mr. Boychuk, the new chairman of the board of directors of the bank.

We have experienced challenges recently, and the Board of Directors is confident that Eric will refocus the organization on customer experience and operational efficiency. Eric’s appointment as President and CEO follows his exceptional performance at the helm of our business services and is part of our formal succession planning process.

Mr. Provost’s mission will be threefold: ensuring that the bank quickly resolves all issues related to the outage, improving communications with customers and launching an in-depth review of the factors that led to the outage.

“Once the issues surrounding the outage are fully resolved, we will develop a new plan to ensure the continued success of our Bank. We will focus our efforts on regaining the trust of our loyal customers while continuing our actions to increase operational efficiency and growth in all our business sectors,” said Mr. Provost.

Mr. Provost has worked for the Laurentian Bank for more than ten years. He holds a master’s degree in finance from the University of Quebec in Montreal.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Darko Mihelic said the outage appears to be “a big enough problem to lead to an abrupt change of guard.”

Departure of Rania Llewellyn

The President and CEO, Rania Llewellyn, is leaving her position at a time when the institution finds itself in a crisis management situation for its communications with clients. Even though she was taking French lessons, M^me Llewellyn would not have had sufficient mastery to carry out crisis communication with French-speaking customers of the Quebec financial institution.

The manager arrived in office in 2020 to turn around Laurentian at a time when it was significantly behind in technology. Under his leadership, the bank made up part of this delay, notably with the launch of its mobile application. It also managed to achieve certain profitability targets.

However, these efforts have been slowed down by the recent difficult context for the banking industry. Laurentian Bank launched a strategic review process in July that could have resulted in the sale of the institution. The bank was unable to find a buyer.

Last week, the IT outage affected the institution’s online banking services on its website and mobile app. It was possible to make bank withdrawals at the ATM, but it was not possible to make other transactions, such as deposits.

The bank says it is gradually restoring its services, but still notes on its website that some balances and transactions may not yet be fully updated.

Laurentian Bank explained that the outage was linked to updating the computer system. She assured that it was not linked to a cyber attack and that customer data had not been put at risk.

Furthermore, even though Monday is a federal holiday, on the occasion of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation which took place on Saturday, several branches of the Laurentian Bank will be open. All monthly bank fees for the month of September will also be waived, the institution said.

Laurentian Bank shares lost $1.22, or 4.03%, to $29.05 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.