The Price of Not Knowing What a Chequing Account Costs

In the early 2000s, I was part of the ALG Software team that deployed Metify ABM at Scotiabank's Canadian Banking division. For the first time in the bank's history, management saw the fully loaded, activity-traced cost of each retail product. The silence in that room was unforgettable. A standard personal chequing account cost CAD $487 per year to operate. The bank was charging CAD $180. Pedro San Martín of Asher & Company tells the story of what Metify revealed — and why the 93x cost gap between a branch transaction and a digital one is the most important number in retail banking that most banks have never calculated.