MESSAGE FROM PRESIDENT AND CEO Chris Fowler
WE ARE THE BEST BANK FOR BUSINESS OWNERS IN CANADA
We have a differentiated strategy as the best full-service bank for business owners and their families. We are obsessed with their success and provide them with an unrivaled client experience that remains consistent through economic cycles. Our winning culture and focus of our teams to deliver that client experience is a competitive advantage, and we are executing on opportunities to win more full-service clients across our Canadian footprint. Our people first culture supports our continued position as a destination for top talent. This year we seamlessly executed our planned succession at the executive team level. I wish Carolyn Graham, Glen Eastwood and Darrell Jones happiness in their retirements and thank each of them for their significant contributions to CWB. I am confident that Carolina Parra, Jeff Wright, John Steeves and Azfar Karimuddin are the right additions to our executive team to continue to deliver a differentiated client experience and award-winning workplace culture. Our collaborative, high-performance culture was
recognized again this year by Great Place to Work Canada ® as one of this year’s top 20 Best Workplaces TM in Canada and one of the Best Workplaces TM for Hybrid Work. General commercial loans represent a broad section of the Canadian economy that we believe is underserved by other banks and is a core strategic target for growth. This category is our largest full-service client opportunity, and we delivered strong results, with 14% loan growth in the last year and 15% average annual loan growth over the last five years in this segment (figure 2). We continued to increase our brand awareness, familiarity, and physical presence in Ontario and are leveraging these improvements to drive market share gains. We delivered another year of very strong growth in Ontario fueled by our existing full-service banking centre in Mississauga and our new banking centre in Markham, which opened this summer. Our teams have grown loans in Ontario by an average of 14% annually over the last five years (figure 1).
2 | CWB Financial Group 2022 Annual Report
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