In a compelling interview with CanadianSME Small Business Magazine, Véronique Dorval, BDC’s Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, discussed the transformative impacts of digital banking on small businesses in Canada. Véronique highlighted the strides made in accessibility, efficiency, and the customization of financial services to better suit the dynamic needs of small businesses. With digital banking, Véronique noted, entrepreneurs gain the advantage of simplified transaction processes, faster service delivery through automated systems, and universal access, enabling them to operate their financial activities seamlessly from any location. At BDC, Véronique is steering initiatives that make digital banking more intuitive and responsive, ensuring that services like the digital Express Loan are not just tools, but solutions that foster substantial growth and efficiency in Canada’s entrepreneurial sector. Under her leadership, BDC continues to enhance its digital interfaces and expand its outreach, ensuring that small businesses across Canada are equipped to thrive in an increasingly digital economy.
Véronique brings an impressive 24-year career as a strategic business leader with a track record for driving growth, delivering ambitious transformations and creating a digitally-enabled operating model that is always client focused.
She was appointed BDC’s Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer in August 2022. In this role, she oversees the Financing, Growth & Transition Capital, and Advisory Services business lines, ensuring BDC’s solutions are integrated, effective and efficient for maximum impact on Canadian business owners.
Before joining BDC, she was Senior Vice President and Chief Client Experience Officer at Sun Life Financial, where she defined a transformation agenda and was responsible for sales across direct channels, delivering double-digit growth. During her 8-year tenure with Sun Life Financial, she also held responsibilities for strategic initiatives, client acquisition, engagement and loyalty.
Prior to that, she spent 12 years as Associate Principal at McKinsey & Company, leading management consulting mandates for large North American financial institutions and other clients.
Véronique is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and has a Bachelor in Business Administration from the Université de Sherbrooke, with part of her program completed in Mexico, Spain and India.
Véronique is strongly involved in the development of women in the workplace and in her community. She was a leader in the Sun Life Bright Women network and she is a contributor to the Fitspirit non-profit organization, whose mission is to get teenage girls active for life. Previously, she was a member of the Board of Directors of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens from 2013 to 2023 and she was a member of the Advisory Board of Heads & Hands from 2013 to 2016, whose mission is to provide young people with the tools they need to make informed decisions about their physical and mental well-being. Since June 2022, she is a member of the Board of Directors of Eugeria, a Quebec-based company that proposes concrete solutions to facilitate many aspects of daily life for people with Alzheimer’s disease and their family, in all dignity.
With your extensive background in banking and finance across various roles, how do you see digital banking evolving to meet the needs of small businesses in Canada?
Digital banking for entrepreneurs is about making banking and funding easier, faster, and accessible to more small entrepreneurs.
First, it’s about ease: making information and transactions feasible in a few simple steps. It also means that, through technology, we assist entrepreneurs in finding information, pre-populate forms, and validate them. All of this with one goal, making it easier for entrepreneurs!
It is also about speed. Digital banking allows financial institutions to automate many steps, from the collection and analysis of information to approvals. The tradeoff is that it removes part of the human interaction. This is where having the right balance plays a critical role in the experience.
And finally, digital banking increases accessibility: it makes financing accessible anywhere, anytime, to more small entrepreneurs. All entrepreneurs have a phone, tablet, or computer, making digital banking available on their own terms.
As Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at BDC, what are the key strategies you are implementing to enhance the digital banking experience for your clients?
We have already introduced the digital experience for new and existing small business clients; requesting a loan of up to $100,000 takes only 15 to 20 minutes, completely online. Our existing clients that meet certain criteria can also access (via their account manager) BDC’s digital Express Loan capability, a pre-approved loan of up to $750,000. We are continuously adding digital capabilities for entrepreneurs on bdc.ca; our website features an ‘Articles and Tools’ section that provides practical support on business plan creation, calculating carbon footprint or cybersecurity readiness.
You’ve been a strong advocate for Canadian entrepreneurs. Can you share how BDC’s initiatives under your leadership are tailored to support the growth and innovation of small businesses across the country?
Business owners are incredibly important to their communities and to our country. Our clients employ over 1.2M people. SMEs contribute 50% of Canada’s GDP. It’s important to grow our reach to support as many business owners who require our support as possible. Last year we saw the biggest growth in the number of new loans, and we currently support more than 100,000 business owners across the country.
We pay particular attention to underrepresented groups, including smaller businesses. We increased the number of women, Indigenous, and Black entrepreneurs served by more than 10% just over the last year.
Our strategic focus and initiatives support the priorities of entrepreneurs and help them address important challenges they face.
Small entrepreneurs do not always have the internal resources to optimize their business. Our Advisory Services provide tactical advice and tools to help them be more productive and resilient. Topics range from operational efficiency and financial management to social and environmental issues, labour shortage, and opportunities related to AI.
The productivity gap is top-of-mind; one of the ways to close this gap is via investments in technology. Over the last two years, we were an important partner and contributor to the Canadian Digital Adoption Program.
Given your commitment to community service and your professional role, how do you integrate corporate social responsibility within BDC’s operations and culture?
As a development bank, corporate social responsibility is at the core of our purpose.
It informs our focus on small and medium entrepreneurs, as well as underrepresented business owners such as women, Indigenous and Black entrepreneurs.
We are also committed to supporting greener business models and contributing to a reduction of GHG emissions. We provide advisory services and tools; for example, our Climate Action Centre features a GHG emissions calculator. We are also piloting green solutions to support the construction, acquisition and retrofit of buildings.
Internally, we walk the talk when it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion. We focus on constantly improving our practices from hiring to procurement. In keeping with our development focus, we increased our supplier diversity by 15%, which now accounts for nearly 9% of our total procurement.
Looking ahead, what are the major trends you foresee in the financing and consulting sectors that could impact small businesses, and how is BDC preparing to address these changes?
There are three trends I would like to focus on: productivity, technology, and business transitions.
Productivity and managing the productivity gap are essential to Canada’s economy and they are mission critical to our entrepreneurs’ competitiveness. Our Advisory Services play an oversized role in equipping our clients with the tools they need to stay ahead of the curve such as operational efficiency and financial management.
Technology will continue to evolve at a high pace. The impact ranges from increased digitization and AI-powered opportunities to the need for awareness and safeguards around cybersecurity. We constantly evolve our advisory services offer to help entrepreneurs leverage technology and provide solutions to finance the required investment.
Business transitions should not be a surprise; a significant number of Canadian entrepreneurs will retire in the next few years – more than 60% of Canadian entrepreneurs are over 50 years old – and many of them will look to sell their business. We support entrepreneurs via financing for the next generation (Growth & Transition Capital), by connecting buyers and sellers, and by leveraging our ecosystem network to connect them with relevant partners.
