NCB needs to regain customer confidence, says CEO

CEO of the NCB Financial Group, Robert Almeida, says the company has a lot of work to do to rebuild customer and investor confidence.

Speaking on Taking Stock with Kalilah Reynolds, Almeida said during his tenure leading the company, his focus will be on improving the governance aspect of the business.

“The number one thing [I would fix] is the ‘G’ in EGC, governance. It’s all about the golden rule- ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. If everyone just took personal responsibility for their own space, stayed in their own lane, and focused on their domain of control… we’d automatically be more efficient and have less waste,” he said.

Almeida was officially named NCBFG’s CEO at the company’s annual general meeting a few weeks ago. He had been acting as interim CEO since July 2023 following the resignation of long-time CEO, Patrick Hylton.

Almeida, a chartered accountant by profession, has been with NCB for almost two decades as a director. He previously worked with several of Canada’s largest financial institutions, spearheading a digital bank in the country in the late 1990s, before joining Michael Lee-Chin at NCB in 2002.

The CEO said that stepping into this new role he is aware of the various complaints that NCB customers and shareholders have and the team has already taken proactive steps to address them.

“The bar is higher for us because we do serve a lot of customers so we have to make sure that we’re better than everyone else just because everyone’s gonna see our mistakes,” he said.

He added that one of the company’s biggest hurdles will be correcting the hiccups with its digital rollout.

“I think for NCB in particular what we did is, we raced down the digital pathway hoping that it would work 100% but it doesn’t. And so for the, whether it’s 1% or 5% of the time when it doesn’t work, when we fall off the rails we have to make it easier to get back on,” he said.

Almeida noted that NCB will not become a fully digital service provider as that would alienate a significant portion of its customers.

He emphasized that rebuilding customer confidence and trust is a priority for the company.