After a major outage last week whose effects continue to be felt, Laurentian Bank announced Monday the departure of its president and CEO, Rania Llewellyn, and the chairman of its board of directors, Michael Mueller.
Éric Provost, who was recently named group head of personal and commercial banking, becomes president and CEO, while Michael Boychuk is named chairman of the board of directors.
In a press release, the institution indicated that Mr. Provost’s first mandate as president will be to “restore trust with the Bank’s clients and deal with the consequences of the central system failure which occurred last week “.
“We have experienced difficulties recently and the board of directors is convinced that Éric (Provost) will be able to refocus the organization on customer experience and operational efficiency. The appointment of Eric to the position of President and CEO follows his exceptional performance at the head of our Business Services and is part of our formal succession planning process,” noted Mr. Boychuk, the new chairman of the board of directors of the bank.
Mr. Provost’s mission will be threefold: ensuring that the bank quickly resolves all issues related to the outage, improving communications with customers and launching an in-depth review of the factors that led to the outage.
Last week, the IT outage affected the institution’s online banking services on its website and mobile application. It was possible to make bank withdrawals from the ATM, but it was not possible to make other transactions such as deposits.
The bank says it is gradually restoring its services, but still notes on its website that some balances and transactions may not yet be fully updated.
Furthermore, even though Monday is a federal holiday, on the occasion of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation which took place on Saturday, several branches of the Laurentian Bank will be open. All monthly bank fees for the month of September will also be waived, the institution said.
Mme Llewellyn had served as president and CEO since 2020. She was the first woman to lead the institution.
For his part, Mr. Provost has worked for the Laurentian Bank for more than ten years. He holds a master’s degree in finance from the University of Quebec in Montreal.
“Once the issues surrounding the outage are fully resolved, we will develop a new plan to ensure the continued success of our Bank. We will focus our efforts on regaining the trust of our loyal customers while continuing our actions to increase operational efficiency and growth in all our sectors of activity,” affirmed Mr. Provost in the institution’s statement.
In recent months, the Montreal bank has conducted a review of its strategic options, which is often considered by investors as a prelude to the sale of a company.
The review, however, concluded without an agreement for its sale, with the institution arguing that the best path forward to generate shareholder value is an accelerated evolution of its current strategic plan, paying attention increased efficiency and simplification.