A national group representing retirees has filed a complaint with Canada’s federal competition watchdog alleging that sales practices used by branch employees at the Big Five banks are anti-competitive and harmful to customers.
In a letter sent this week to the Competition Bureau, the Canadian Association of Retired Persons (CARP) voiced concerns that bank branch advisers do not provide advice based on the entire marketplace of available investment products. Instead, CARP said investment advice is curated from a limited shelf of banks’ own proprietary products, even if there may be a more suitable option for a client from a third-party provider.
“This structure essentially kills any competition once investors enter their local branches,” CARP chief executive officer Anthony Quinn wrote in the submission.
The lack of investment product competition is “alarming,” he added, especially when compared with other financial service products such as mortgages, loans, credit cards and insurance, where banks “compete aggressively.”
Mr. Quinn argued that the priority of the Big Five banks is to “sell, almost exclusively, proprietary investment products, with no mandate to prioritize the best outcomes for their clients.”
“Where independent wealth managers succeed when their clients’ portfolios perform well, branch advisers receive their compensation by achieving sales targets for internal products and increasing assets under administration for the institution,” Mr. Quinn said in the letter.
Sarah Brown, a spokesperson for the Competition Bureau, confirmed in an e-mail to The Globe and Mail that it has received CARP’s complaint. She said the bureau is required by law to conduct its work confidentially, and was therefore unable to confirm whether it is investigating the alleged conduct.
“That said, know that when we find evidence of activity that contravenes the Competition Act, we take appropriate action,” Ms. Brown added.
Nathalie Bergeron, a spokesperson for the Canadian Bankers Association, said in an e-mail that the CBA would welcome the opportunity for further dialogue with CARP’s leadership if it wishes to engage. She said this was communicated in a letter that was sent to Mr. Quinn last December.
Ms. Bergeron added the CBA shares a common goal with CARP of ensuring that seniors – and all Canadians – “receive transparent, fair, high-quality financial service” from their banks.
“Banks and their employees prioritize consumer and investor protection measures, and we are committed to providing Canadians with the advice they need to reach their financial goals,” she said.
For CARP, the concern lies in the sales-driven culture at the banks – a practice that was flagged last summer in a regulatory review of Canada’s Big Five banks.
The review, which was conducted by the Ontario Securities Commission and the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization, included responses from more than 2,800 representatives from all five bank-affiliated mutual fund dealers in Ontario. The results found that mutual fund advisers at the banks face a high degree of pressure to meet sales targets, which could lead them to offer products or services that are not in a client’s best interests.
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The two regulators did not provide policy recommendations to the banks, but said that given the results, the bank-affiliated mutual fund dealers should conduct an assessment of their sales environments.
The OSC and CIRO said their examination identified several areas of concern that will be more closely examined in a second review, before determining whether any further action would be required to ensure continuing compliance with securities law.
But Mr. Quinn said his membership, most of whom are retirees or pre-retirees, cannot wait years for the necessary changes to be made, and investing through bank branches remains one of the most common ways to invest for seniors.
“Retirees have limited ability to recover from poor investment outcomes, making the quality of financial advice particularly important for their long-term financial security,” Mr. Quinn said in his submission.
In a blog post on the CARP website, Mr. Quinn said he attempted to engage with the banking sector, as well as with TD Bank directly, to address the core issues of product limitations, sales pressures and misaligned incentives. But the sector did not respond with any “concrete steps” to fix the problems that the regulators identified.
At the end of 2025, CARP addressed the sales culture in a federal pre-budget submission, and earlier this year, Mr. Quinn publicly posted a letter CARP wrote in November, criticizing the Canadian Bankers Association for not adjusting these practices, which he said were found to be “predatory” toward about six million Canadians who invest through bank branches.
CBA chief executive officer Anthony Ostler responded to CARP in a letter dated Dec. 9, saying that while the banks take the feedback provided by the OSC and CIRO seriously, the survey reflects the sentiment of a select group of respondents in Ontario only.
“It does not verify behaviours identified through a formal review or investigation,” Mr. Ostler said in the letter.
In its submission to the Competition Bureau, CARP asks for a review of the big banks’ “oligopolistic power and collective decision to restrict investor choice at bank branches.”
Mr. Quinn said CARP is not suggesting that banks are acting unlawfully, but that the current system at the banks may limit meaningful competition where investment advice is delivered. The end result, he said, could leave seniors becoming more reliant on public programs such as Old Age Security, the Guaranteed Income Supplement, or subsidized health care.
“If our calls for action fall on deaf ears, the step of advocacy efforts will be to recommend that our members and the broader market of seniors move their investment assets out of their banks if they continue this predatory pattern,” he said.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the first name of CBA CEO Anthony Ostler.