[00:00:05] Russell: This is Contributors, a show exploring how today's Canadian business leaders are building a better future for Canada. So, Jade, I think we finally have someone today on the show from Western Canada, is that correct?  

[00:00:19] Jade: We do. That is right. So we're going to be speaking with or you're going to be speaking with, I should say, Christine Bergeron. She's the president and CEO of Vancity. Vancity is a values-based financial co-operative, and they actually use their assets to improve the financial well-being of its members and their communities. So very interesting tie here. Christine was actually just named Woman of the Year earlier in 2022 and really excited to hear about her community impact and an environmental sustainability focus.  

 [00:00:56] Russell: Yeah, I know Christine started as CEO during the pandemic. I also know that she's not new to Vancity. She spent ten plus years there. So I'm interested in her personal leadership journey, but I'm also interested in learning some lessons from Vancity. Vancity is famously community centric. Earlier in my career, I was in corporate social responsibility, and frankly, they're seen as best in class in that space, and a lot of people look to them for inspiration. So I'm interested in that, but I'm also interested in knowing not just sort of how they spend the money, but how they make the money.  

[00:01:32] Jade: Yeah. And for our listeners who are not yet familiar with Vancity, if you take a quick peek at their website, you'll see that they do a lot of great stuff for their communities, but they're also very innovative in the banking industry as well.  

[00:01:45] Russell: So let's get into it.  

 [00:01:47] Jade: Let's do it.  

 [00:01:54] Russell: So, Christine, welcome to Contributors.  

 [00:01:57] Christine Bergeron: Thanks for having me.  

 [00:01:59] Russell: You became CEO during the middle of the pandemic. What was that like?  

 [00:02:04] Christine Bergeron: It was interesting. By that point, I had worked in many different roles here. And certainly there was some benefit to that, you know, when given that I started during COVID. So I had built up capital and trust with people before COVID. So in person, you know, I wasn't starting from scratch virtually. And many team members knew me. And I think they knew that, you know, how deeply I believed in our work, so I think that helped. And because I had led different lines of business and had been leading all of our lines of business and our impact work, I did already have a deep understanding for how we would probably respond during COVID, which is how we always respond, which is people at the center. I imagine, frankly, that it probably would have been different if it hadn't been COVID, but I don't know anything different. I only know starting as a CEO during that time. And there's some pros and cons, right, of being able to quickly do things virtually. There's a lot of benefits to that in terms of a large organization, being able to speak to the whole team through town halls that we didn't do prior to that. Yeah, never a dull moment, probably, that's what most people would say during that period. And also I felt very, you know, I felt really lucky to be able to lead this organization, so many great people here, and understanding just how much empathy really was required during that time and continues to be required really as people were adjusting to, you know, just a constantly changing external environment.  

 [00:03:29] Russell: Can we get into that a little bit more? How did Vancity respond to the pandemic?  

 [00:03:33] Christine Bergeron: Yeah, we responded the way we try to respond to things every day and really about putting people at the center. And so when I say that, there's two sides to that. There's our employees. And it was really trying to ensure, you know, how do we keep them safe? How do we really think about doing that while still serving our membership? And that was was tricky. So we did some different things. We did a rotation where we had frontline staff. They would work one week, survey numbers. They would spend one week doing calls and then they'd have one week off. So we did that for a little while. Those types of things. And then in terms of community, you know, there's a we've got a huge list of things that we did during that time. And if you think back, we weren't really sure how things are going to unfold. So we offered deferrals on mortgages. You know, really quickly, we brought our interest rates for credit cards down to zero. Government was coming up with new programs and doing their best. But what we noticed in speaking to our membership and being out in the community was that there were gaps. At the time, at the beginning, if you were just running your own business, a lot of the programs weren't catching you. And so we were trying to come up with new programs. We put what we call the unity term deposit in place. So it was a higher rate of interest in order to help us go and do this impacting community. We supported local quite a bit in terms of ensuring that local businesses were getting promoted. We did studies to understand what was happening to stores on Main Street and then responding to that through different programs. So the levers that we have, you know, we don't we can't do everything. But with levers that we had, it was just constantly, how do we support our membership to get through?  

[00:05:10] Russell: So can you tell us a little bit about co-op and how it's different from other kinds of financial institutions?  

[00:05:16] Christine Bergeron: We were actually founded to provide financial access to those in this city who were generally overlooked, so they might not have had access to systems that would raise them up financially. And so we were the first financial institution in Canada, as an example, to provide loans to women without a male having to cosign, the first deprioritized lending to working class immigrant families. You know, the next piece is really those principles of inclusion and social justice that for us have really been the cornerstone since day one. The third for us is that we give 30 percent of our profits back to our members and our communities every year. And so we often have to remind people that we're not a charity. We're a for profit co-operative. We're a profitable one. But we do have a different way of thinking, a different model in terms of giving back. And then, you know, maybe one last point is that for us, the impact of our actions on people and planet, it's really ingrained is both in how we make our profits and then also what we do with them. We have a triple bottom line business model that's measurable, but we really consider impact on people and planet in our decisions. And so that is quite different for most financial firms.  

[00:06:26] Russell: What does that mean triple bottom line?  

[00:06:27] Christine Bergeron: Yeah, triple bottom line. At the end of the day, you know, most businesses have a single bottom line, which is, you know, profit, and triple bottom line really then looks at, you know, people planet and profit, and how do you incorporate all of those in your decision making.  

[00:06:43] Russell: And doing some research for this discussion, I was really struck by kind of the history of Vancity, and you mentioned the fact that you were providing those loans without a male cosigner and your first in doing so, that blew me away. And there was a couple other things that blew me away that I want to mention to you. So first, to offer a socially responsible mutual fund in Canada. Really impressed me. And the other thing is carbon neutral since 2008. Talk about being ahead of the curve since 2008, which I believe was two or three years ahead of schedule.  

[00:07:21] Christine Bergeron: Yes. So I will, you know, be really clear that I stand on the shoulders of others right in that. I was not, you know, here for some of that. But absolutely, it is about, you know, how do we keep thinking forward and really trying to show that it can be done. Right. People often say, oh, that's too hard, and really for us, that's not how we think. So currently know we have climate commitments that we just put out not that long ago. It includes getting into net zero. But the other elements of that are, you know, only offering responsible investments. Right. You know, we sort of got to that point of to your point that, yes, we were first with socially responsible way back. And of course, that's now, you know, we'll say taken off in terms of assets that are being allocated to those areas. But it's also like, well, what else? How else would you be thinking about this? So carbon neutral in '08. Now we're looking to get to net zero. And that's the difference of our own operations, you know, versus what it is that we finance. We also just put out a new carbon counter with our visa. So we'll be the first financial institution in Canada to have that. It will be launching in the new year. For those who want to know, you know, what their carbon footprint is. It's not for everybody. But we think giving people the tools, we hear from our members all the time that they want to do more, you know, how else can we help them do more?  

[00:08:44] Russell: ESG is something that comes up all the time on Contributors, and it's a really hot topic. Can you tell us a little bit about what is that?  

[00:08:52] Christine Bergeron: So I would maybe step back a little bit that I totally appreciate that ESG is much more popular today, but it has been around for a long time, right, and has this concept of impact. You know, ESG is an important concept. It's really been more broadly about a risk framework, you know, a tool for assessing environmental, social, you know, governance risks that might affect a company's financial performance. So it's a bit more about the external context, how that's affecting you as a business and what you're going to do to mitigate that. And so the methodology was never really meant to measure or represent the holistic, positive impact a company can have on the world. And so the impact investing lens is really that flipped. So it takes, you know, the company at the center, what are your levers and what positive impact are you trying to have on your community, on the economy, etc.. And the perspective that I have and that we have here is our current models of how the economy so broke, aren't really working. They're broken or they're certainly not working for enough people. And overall, I think as a society, we've come to accept at a certain level that it's okay to externalize the cost of a bad business model. So, you know, often it's taxpayers who have to pay the burden, whether it's social and environmental harms that are being created. But people, you know, and by people, I mean the public consumers, they are caring a lot more about the impact that businesses are having, the suppliers they're using. And so I think and it's not just about giving money to terrible causes, and in impact business is really trying to think about how do you make decisions with that lens. So for us at Vancity, every business decision, you know, it's okay our operational hiring procurement needs to have an impact lens, alongside that.  

[00:10:41] Russell: Thinking about the 30 percent of your profits that go back into the community, can you tell us a little bit about where does that money go specifically?  

[00:10:50] Christine Bergeron: So this year we will have distributed almost 32 million to our members and into the community here. And since 1994, it's been over 420 million. So the money goes to members. So we do split it up as a dividend to members and then, you know, money that goes to community to grants, to community partnerships, working to improve racial equity, reconciliation, local economy, climate action. Those are certainly our bigger buckets. We don't have all the resources, nor do we have the know how the way community organizations have that, you know, in each of their communities here in the lower mainland.  

 [00:11:28] Russell: So one of those causes that you just mentioned is reconciliation. It's unusual to hear a business sort of say that's going to be one of our, you know, one of a handful of topics that we're going to be focused on. Tell me a little bit more about that and how you're working towards reconciliation.  

 [00:11:45] Christine Bergeron: Yeah, reconciliation has been a core value of Vancity for quite some time now. You know, we've progressed from starting at the beginning, which was really supporting the broader awareness here through Reconciliation Canada. You know, we've signed on to PAR, which is a program that helps really to solidify, you know, the work that we've been doing. So we work closely with many First Nations organizations here, and it's really thinking about I guess it's always twofold for us. First, how do we support reconciliation in community for our members, you know, as an impact business, effectively trying to think about that ourselves. And so we look at programs. Can we rethink our products differently? How do we partner? For us, it's always in a very genuine way. We're not just going to go to a community and tell people what we think. It's how does a community need. What does the community need from us? How do we support? And then the second piece is, as an employer, how do we think about really embedding things like an indigenous, like having that indigenous lens on hiring? You know, we've been doing learning sessions on reconciliation again, the way you do for other topics a financial institution would do  for many, many years. So one example, you know, would be that we just created a new financial literacy program that was called Wealth Mindset: Indigenous Financial Resilience. And it was really it's a decolonized financial literacy course. So we've had a financial literacy course for our members and partners for years. We've shared that out through the credit union sector, but through a close connection in community, we learned that not all people have the same definitions of wealth, which of course, when you say it sounds pretty hard. Yeah, of course. Right. But this new course was created by and for indigenous communities.  

 [00:13:38] Russell: For some of our business leaders that are listening today, they may be thinking, what Vancity does is so inspiring, and I want some of that for my business. But how do I get some of this kind of magic, some of this impact without being a cooperative? Right. Like a lot of our listeners are going to be leaders at publicly traded firms. So how do you get a little bit of Vancity within a public company framework?  

 [00:14:07] Christine Bergeron: That structure does help, but I would say is not the only thing. You can still be a co-op and not fully lean into the business model the way that we have. Right. The reason to want to do it from a business case and even just in terms of opinion polling that we've done over the last couple of years, you know, it has definitely shown that Canadians and British Columbians, especially younger ones, expect businesses that they work with, you know, to be about more than just profit. And same if you're trying to hire these days, you really need to have, you know, a broader, broader purpose in that sense. So I guess my suggestions would be, if you want to have a bit of it, is you do need to challenge the status quo and the traditional frameworks of risk and return. And that's tough, but it can be done. So I think you can do that on a micro scale. If you don't feel that you can do it yet at the full business level, there are small areas within your business where you could start doing that. I would say you also need to change the time frame of your thinking, you know, and learn from other cultures, that it's not just about, you know, the next quarter and the next year. And I appreciate that shareholders want to see that, but if you can sow the longer term view, everybody wants a long term sustainable business. Right. But I would also say that if you're focused on who you serve, who your customers are, you know, what challenges they face, and then you use the levers that you have as a business, right, to help ease those challenges that can help you start making a positive impact for people and planet. And then finally, I'd say, if you really mean it, you can set impact based business targets alongside your profit targets, and create some plans on how you reach them. And you can start small with that, and grow that along the way, you know, demonstrate again if it is a public company, demonstrate to your shareholders the value of having those. My experience is that if you do those things, if you change some of the time frame, you think of your levers. You put your customers, so for us, it's our members, you know, at the center, and you start thinking about targets, you can start to move the dial.  

[00:16:04] Russell: One of the things you know for me as a native Torontonian, Vancity feels so Vancouver. Do you think Vancity could be Vancity if it was founded in Toronto?  

 [00:16:17] Christine Bergeron: Well, given the name, you know, no, it would be different. But certainly, you know, could it exist there? I mean, yes, right. We are certainly well known for our impact model, but there are absolutely others doing great work both in Canada and internationally. You know, it wouldn't be the same as Vancity. And because ultimately, how we've grown is by reflecting our own community and the people where we are situated. And so it would need to then adjust for, you know, the different community.  

 [00:16:54] Russell: Earlier in my career, I had a role in corporate social responsibility. And at that time, this would have been 15, 20 years ago. Vancity was the model. We look to you guys for everything because you were just so good at it. But your secret sauce might be innovation. You are this secret innovator that has been at the forefront of almost every big change in Canadian financial services. You were the first branchless bank. You were the first to offer an open mortgage. You were the first to offer a registered education savings plan. Your first to market with so many of these innovations. How do you do it? Where does that come from?  

[00:17:38] Christine Bergeron: It sounds so simple, but really we just respond to the needs that we see in community. I find these days, you say innovation, and people think technology, but it's about the innovation also around systems. And that's where we've been spending a lot of time lately. How do we think differently about these systems that we're all part of, that, you know, as we've talked about, aren't really working for everybody. And I think some of what's probably helped along the way, I can't speak to all the innovations, but is our definition of success is not like how much money we can make on an innovation or on a new product. And that does actually give you a different way of thinking.  

[00:18:19] Russell: Interesting. What advice would you have for business leaders who want that kind of innovation, who are looking to spur that innovation at their own organization? And I think what I'm hearing is the concept of customer centricity, really focusing on the customers, what they need, what they have today and what they don't have. And the other thing is you're suggesting maybe decoupling innovation from profitability, at least in the short term.  

 [00:18:45] Christine Bergeron: Maybe not so much decoupling as appreciating that there can be various outcomes that are equally important. So we still need to make money, right? Like, we're not naive. A business needs to make money and we do to be stable for the long term. I think there are times when you can make concessions on, you know, if it's a small amount of a portfolio, big impact really serving people who need help, maybe that's worth some concession. But I think it's also around can you make enough from it? Make enough while having, you know, great impact and supporting, you know, gaps in a community gaps in an economy. And so that would be maybe a bit more of the nuance. I would throw and I wouldn't decouple it, but I would just think about how do you make enough?  

[00:19:35] Russell: Make sense. Our show is called Contributors, and ultimately we're about organizations that are contributing to a better Canada. How is Vancity contributing to a better Canada?  

[00:19:45] Christine Bergeron: I would say daily, you know, we're trying to help with our members real life problems, right? We were a financial institution. So people who are struggling to make ends meet, helping to support programs, for example, you know, with Ukrainians, you know, coming into Canada, creating more affordable housing, pushing for true economic reconciliation with indigenous people, rethinking our systems to remove racism and then all these daily actions. From my perspective, help us to address the systemic issues that are facing our communities. We are constantly pushing for system change at policy levels in areas like climate reporting as an example. And we do that on the local, national and international level. And we think it's important to do that despite the fact that we're, you know, tiny Vancity out on the West Coast because the system and global issues are localized, like the effects are localized and you feel them here. And so it's why we've been spending more and more time looking at how we can contribute across that level from local all the way to global. And we can't do it alone. And we know that we need to work with others to keep influencing and changing how we think about our economy. And so we think we're contributing a ton every day, but more importantly, you know, we're trying to work with others so that there's a broader and broader contribution happening across the board.  

[00:21:15] Russell: I talked to some of my friends in Vancouver, and I have a friend in particular who is a huge Vancity brand champion, and I let him know that I was be talking to you. He said, what makes that job so hard is the diversity of the members and the fact that there are probably more polarizing perspectives today than there have ever been. There are people that so they're kind of in Vancouver moved to Lyons Bay, professionals working remote and have never been doing better. And then there are people struggling to meet their basic needs. And those two groups want Vancity to be something very different right now. It's Christine's job to balance those priorities. And he said, Russell, I want you to ask, how does she do that?  

[00:22:01] Christine Bergeron: So it's a very valid perspective that we have a broad membership. And because our members are owners, there is a perspective that and it's correct, which is it what makes Vancity so great, that, hey, you know, I need this from you, right. Like, this is what I was talking about the whole time of how do we respond to our members? And we can't be all things to all people. And it is about trying to do our best to be really aware of the fact that our members you know, there's 560,000 of them. They're all different. When we were looking at a lot of stats from COVID, it was similar to this comment in that, you know, you say, oh, on average people have saved X dollars. And you're like, well, the average doesn't tell you anything, right, because we were very aware that some people were super struggling and others were doing very well. And our job is to understand those nuances. And so I would say, the way we do it as an organization is that we've got amazing team members who are constantly speaking to members connecting in and work with compassion, is the word that I always use for how our team members interact with our membership. That is how you can understand what your members want from you. And if you can't deliver it all the time, that you're able to tell them why and when we will or why we can't. What we also hear from our members broadly is that they all want us to still be making a contribution to this community and to be focused on the issues we're focused on. We asked them often. We've told them. They want us focused on these issues and they want their banking done well. So that it is. It's a harder job. Then if you're only focused on profit, it's actually at times easier, I think. But I don't have an exact secret sauce answer. It's just a constant balance.  

[00:24:02] Russell: I love I love your answer, though, and I love the idea of you can't just take the average. Right. There's incredible nuance that you're missing if you're looking at the averages. What's next for you and Vancity?  

[00:24:14] Christine Bergeron: We have a vision. Our vision is a transformed economy that protects the Earth and guarantees equity for all. So it's a bold vision. We also have ambitious, yet necessary climate commitments. And a core part of these is really to ensure that no one is left behind in the transition and adaptation to the changes happening in climate. It's going to be a lot of work, and our teams are really, really focused on on delivering all of that.  

[00:24:42] Russell: That sounds fantastic and inspiring. Well, thank you so much for being here today. This has been a really great discussion. And I've loved learning more about Vancity, and I think our listeners will feel the same way.  

[00:24:55] Christine Bergeron: Well, thanks so much for having me.  

[00:24:59] Jade: Wow. What a great conversation with Christine.  

[00:25:02] Russell: Yeah, absolutely. It was a really, really interesting conversation. And it was so interesting to learn more about Christine and her leadership journey.  

[00:25:14] Jade: Doing well by doing good and innovating along the way. A few things that stood out for me. First of all, I think with Vancity, they have a different way of thinking, and that's really reflected in their business model, their triple bottom line. So let's talk about that a little bit.  

[00:25:32] Russell: Absolutely. I have to be honest and say I wasn't familiar with that term before she used it, but it makes sense. Right. And it's so much of what people are talking about in business today. So the idea of obviously you need to continue to focus on profitability to survive, to be able to do business again tomorrow. But the idea of people and planet as well really makes so much sense to me. And I like the idea of separating people from planet because it allows you to think about stakeholders that you might not think about, right? If you're thinking about the planet overall, you're thinking about your impact, not just on your employees and on your customers, but on, you know, seven generations from now and on people on the other side of the world. And I really like that.  

[00:26:21] Jade: Yeah. And I think a similarity or a common theme we saw with Christine was the idea of customer centricity and putting your people at the center, putting your people over products.  

[00:26:33] Russell: For me, one of the most interesting parts of the conversation was when we were talking about the degree to which Vancity has been a leader in innovation, in product innovation. And her insight was, you know, I think ultimately we weren't necessarily trying to be innovative. We were just trying to meet the needs of our members. We were just responding to their needs and in some cases, intuiting needs we believed they had but weren't sure. So developed a product and it resonated, and that goes back in their history, 50 years. There's nothing new about that. That's really who they are as an organization. So one of the things I'm really interested to see is what are they going to invent? How are they going to innovate in the ten years to come?  

[00:27:24] Jade: Yeah. And how can other organizations follow the same suit? And I think, you know, one of the things she had said ultimately was you need to identify why you're wanting to focus on the good right, focus on your communities, focus on ESG. And if it's for the sole purpose of achieving your bottom line, you know, doing it because everyone thinks you need to do it, then you're never actually going to get there.  

[00:27:51] Russell: That's really advice that could work for any kind of business, right, any kind of business that is looking to connect with their purpose. It really goes back to talking to your employees, talking to your customers, figuring out what are the issues that they care about and finding a way to define your purpose around that, around the things that matter to your key stakeholders. Now, I'm looking forward to our next episode.  

[00:28:20] Jade: Do you want me to tell you who it is?  

[00:28:21] Russell: I do.  

[00:28:22] Jade: Just kidding. You have to wait.  

[00:28:27] Russell:  Thank you for listening to Contributors, the podcast for Canadian leaders. We hope you'll take away some valuable insights and lessons from today's conversation. To help us reach even more listeners, please subscribe, rate and review Contributors on Apple Podcasts. If you'd like to learn more about CAAT, visit us at CAATPension.ca.