Brian Porter Speech - September 15, 2016

An address by Brian Porter, President and Chief Executive Officer, at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, Toronto, Ontario.

Toronto, Ontario

September 15, 2016

Hello, everyone.

I want to begin by offering my thanks to the Rotman School of Management for hosting us this morning. We appreciate your hospitality.

I also want to extend a warm welcome to all of the students, staff and faculty who have joined us.

And, of course, a special welcome to the Scotiabankers in the audience!

Thank you for being here!

Finally, let me thank you, Tiff, for that kind introduction.

I was very pleased when Tiff joined Scotiabank’s Board last year.

He has already contributed a great deal to the Bank – to our customers, shareholders and employees. And I’m delighted to be sharing the stage with him for this morning’s announcement.

I’ve been a Scotiabanker for more than 30 years.

And over the course of my career, the financial services industry has undergone some big changes.

Today, with the prevalence of digital technology, changes are happening faster and at an even greater scale than ever before.

Virtually every industry around the globe is being impacted.

Driving these technological changes are evolving customer expectations.

Consumers today expect the same frictionless experience whether they’re paying for a coffee, booking a hotel room, ordering a taxi or signing up for a credit card.

At Scotiabank, we are focused on providing our customers with the best banking experience.

To do that, we are constantly developing and testing new products and rethinking how services can be accessed more efficiently. Innovation of this magnitude requires lots of highly skilled employees with expertise in areas such as cyber security, data analytics, and engineering, and I’m proud to tell you that Scotiabank has become an employer of choice for people with these kinds of specialized skills.

As we digitize the Bank, we are finding that more and more digitally savvy people want to come and work with us. And we expect this will increase when we launch our new Digital Factory in the coming months.

At Scotiabank, we believe we have a responsibility to invest in research and training to produce digital talent that is able to adapt to constant change.

And in turn, business schools have a responsibility to produce strong management talent that Canada’s leading companies need. That brings me to the reason we’re here this morning.

To ensure that Canadians entering the marketplace are prepared to participate fully in today’s digital economy, businesses and business schools must work together more closely.

Today, Scotiabank and the Rotman School of Management are doing just that.

I’m pleased to announce that Scotiabank is investing $1.75 million to launch a new partnership with Rotman: The Scotiabank Disruptive Technologies Venture at the Rotman School of Management.

The partnership will give Scotiabank greater access to the talent and research we need to stay ahead of the competition.

And at the same time, Rotman students will have the opportunity to gain hands-on experience to prepare them for job opportunities offered by our digital world.

Part of the gift will go towards supporting the machine learning stream of Rotman’s Creative Destruction Lab, and in a few minutes, we’re going to see some examples of Machine Learning ventures firsthand.

We are very optimistic that the partnership will produce great results for young people, for Rotman and for Scotiabank.

At this time, I’ll invite Tiff to speak to some of the specific features of this venture… Tiff.