Employee had joint account with customer and missed information in his mortgage application, but acted in good faith
An adjudicator has found the dismissal of a bank employee for not revealing her joint account with a friend and not following proper procedure for the friend’s mortgage application to be unjust.
Angela D’Onofrio began working for Scotiabank in a Montreal-area branch on Aug. 16, 2010. By 2015, she was working as a small business advisor trainee in Laval, Que. Her position required a significant amount of independent work, so there was a high level of trust by the bank that she would do her job well and with honesty and integrity.
Scotiabank had a series of guidelines for business conduct that all employees were expected to follow. D’Onofrio and all other employees were required to acknowledge every year that she had read and understood the guidelines and agreed to be bound by them. The guidelines included the following:
• You may transact business or make entries on your own accounts only in a manner available to non-employee customers. The transactions of close associates must also be established and conducted in the same manner as those of non-employee customers.
• Never access customer or employee personal information without a legitimate business reason and proper authorization.
• It is your responsibility to safeguard and appropriately handle any confidential information which you have access to.
• It is wrong to disclose confidential information to any other person who does not require the information to carry out their job responsibilities on behalf of Scotiabank.
Scotiabank also required that when someone’s employment was being confirmed for a transaction, staff must obtain the company’s phone number from an independent resource and speak to the employer’s human resources or payroll department.
Employee’s friendship with customer revealed
In May 2015, Scotiabank’s security and investigation department learned that D’Onofrio had processed a mortgage application in 2012 that contained fraudulent income documentation. It also discovered the customer had a karate school, of which D’Onofrio was aware but didn’t include in the application. The department reviewed her email messages with the customer, which further revealed she had provided the maiden name of the customer’s mother and the customer’s phone number to the customer’s spouse with joint access to the account so she could activate the customer’s bank card online. Providing that information without consent — even to a spouse — was a breach of the bank’s privacy policy.
D’Onofrio was suspended with pay on July 2 while an investigation proceeded. The employee relations department met with D’Onofrio, who described the customer as her best friend. D’Onofrio also said she wasn’t aware the employment and income information was fraudulent. She claimed she called the individual who signed the employment letter to verify the customer’s income, but the investigation had revealed that the individual didn’t work at the company.
D’Onofrio also admitted that she had provided the customer’s password information to his wife and accessed the customer’s profile on a daily basis — in fact, she was a joint account holder with the customer. She said she helped him manage his finances by paying his bills and making sure everything was up to date, as he had a poor credit rating from past issues and she didn’t want it to happen again. She had been doing this even after the customer divorced, as his wife had managed his finances before that, D’Onofrio said. She also said she worked hard and if she breached the guidelines, it wasn’t intentional and the bank didn’t suffer any damage because of it.
Scotiabank’s investigators determined that D’Onofrio had breached its guidelines by putting herself in a potential conflict of interest by holding a joint account with a customer, failing to protect confidential customer information, failing to properly verify employment information to support a mortgage credit application, and misusing her position and access to the bank’s systems in a manner not available to non-employees. In addition, Scotiabank found D’Onofrio wasn’t straightforward and truthful with investigators by claiming she had verified the customer’s employment information when the evidence showed she likely didn’t make the call. Her story about the customer’s ex-wife managing his finances also didn’t make sense if she still had to provide password information to her.
Scotiabank determined that D’Onofrio disregarded established policies and procedures that breached the high standard of trust, honesty, and judgment expected of bank employees, and she didn’t seem to fully comprehend the seriousness of those breaches. D’Onofrio was dismissed for cause on July 28.
Employee didn’t try to hide anything
D’Onofrio challenged her dismissal, arguing she acted in good faith and didn’t hide her relationship to the customer from anyone, and her branch manager knew him as well — the customer came to her branch regularly and greeted everyone — so she didn’t think it necessary to formally reveal their friendship. She also claimed what seemed like a lack of remorse was due to shock and disbelief at the investigation and her dismissal. She also pointed out she was considered a good employee with a clean record.
The adjudicator found it was important to consider that D’Onofrio’s branch manager knew the customer and was aware of her friendship with him. This likely led D’Onofrio to believe the manager accepted the situation and, if there was any potential conflict of interest, the manager could have advised D’Onofrio of this and instructed her not to take charge of the customer’s bank account. Scotiabank couldn’t argue D’Onofrio didn’t reveal her friendship with the customer, the adjudicator said.
The adjudicator also found that while D’Onofrio disclosed the customer’s password information to the customer’s former spouse, she claimed she knew it by heart and didn’t access the system to get it. There was also no document presented by Scotiabank that she did access the system to get that information, so the adjudicator couldn’t conclude D’Onofrio breached that guideline.
As for the employment information on the customer’s mortgage application, the adjudicator found D’Onofrio had spoken to both a clerk and the president of the company for which the customer claimed to have worked, and she obtained contact information on the Internet. In addition, D’Onofrio actually obtained approval for the application from her manager, so all indications were she followed the proper procedure for her inquiry.
Finally, while the adjudicator agreed that D’Onofrio technically breached the guidelines by holding an account jointly with the customer, it wasn’t an intentional breach and D’Onofrio honestly wanted to help the customer with his finances. The manager was aware of this and accepted it, said the adjudicator.
The adjudicator found Scotiabank did not have just cause to dismiss D’Onofrio, as her actions didn’t significantly breach the guidelines or put the bank at risk. The complaint was upheld, with the remedy still to be decided.
“(D’Onofrio) did not commit any theft, embezzlement or serious fraud or gross misconduct,” said the adjudicator. “There were no false pretenses by (D’Onofrio). She acted in good faith and may at most have committed an honest mistake.”
For more information see:
• D’onofrio and Bank of Nova Scotia, Re, 2016 CarswellNat 6118 (Can. Lab. Code Adj.).
