TORONTO, ON - April 13, 2016 /CNW/ - Scotiabank (TSX: BNS) (NYSE: BNS) outlined key components of its strategic agenda at its Annual Meeting of Shareholders yesterday. The Bank is taking action to enhance shareholder value over the medium and long-term.

During the Annual Meeting, Brian Porter described significant ongoing shifts in consumer behaviours, particularly digital banking adoption, and touched on Scotiabank's efforts to enhance the customer experience, drive a digital transformation and improve its productivity.

"We continue to pursue a comprehensive change agenda to position Scotiabank for the future," said Brian Porter, President and CEO at Scotiabank. "We are working to deliver consistently excellent customer experience wherever and however customers choose to interact with us."

The Bank is rapidly adopting digital innovation across all of its customer touch points -- as well as its supporting corporate processes and systems -- to increase effectiveness, reduce friction points and improve efficiency. As part of its efforts, Scotiabank is simplifying its organizational and operating models, as the nature of work and roles change.

Scotiabank is also evolving its retail branch network, moving toward digitally-enabled branch formats that will allow our employees to be more focused on providing financial advice and solutions, as well as fulfill our promise to help our customers become better off. These formats are currently piloting in Mexico, and shortly in Canada. 

Some examples of Scotiabank's digital transformation include:

• Dramatically improving the speed and simplicity of onboarding process for mortgages, credit cards, day-to-day accounts, and small companies. And we are developing a new platform for business lending.
• In our international markets, upgrading and expanding our online and mobile banking platform to offer enhanced and more personalized services to customers, such as online advice, tools and pre-approved solutions.
• Investing $185 million in a new core banking technology system in Mexico to make it easier for employees to provide excellent customer service and advice, while enabling us to serve all of our customer segments more efficiently.
• Investing $100 million to upgrade technology and tools across the Canadian retail network such as iPad tools and better scanning and imaging.
• In Canada, connecting Wealth Management offerings -- such as investment advice and estate planning -- through a single digital platform, to reduce silos and reduce pain points for our customers.

These important initiatives respond to the way customers are interacting with the Bank: according to industry research more than 40% of Canadians expect to be using mobile banking in the near future, and in Latin American, mobile adoption is growing 20% per year. 

"Customer service is at the centre of everything we do. As we embrace more innovative, nimble and adaptive approaches, the changes we are making will enable the Bank and our employees to better serve our customers. We believe they will also deliver good value to shareholders. Taken together, our efforts are positioning us for long-term growth and it will be an exciting time for our employees as we build an even better bank."

About Scotiabank

Scotiabank is Canada's international bank and a leading financial services provider in North America, Latin America, the Caribbean and Central America, and Asia-Pacific. We are dedicated to helping our 23 million customers become better off through a broad range of advice, products and services, including personal and commercial banking, wealth management and private banking, corporate and investment banking, and capital markets. With a team of more than 89,000 employees and assets of $920 billion (as at January 31, 2016), Scotiabank trades on the Toronto (TSX: BNS) and New York Exchanges (NYSE: BNS). Scotiabank distributes the Bank's media releases using CNW. For more information, please visit www.scotiabank.com and follow us on Twitter @ScotiabankViews.