CIBC Client Complaint Appeals Office

Our Role and Mandate:

The CIBC Client Complaint Appeals Office (CCAO) works closely with both clients and CIBC’s business leaders to address client concerns.

The CCAO is part of CIBC. Its mandate is to review your complaint and provide a response that’s objective and unbiased to resolve matters with you. The CCAO is not an independent dispute resolution service. However, in an effort to be impartial, they do not report directly to any business area at CIBC. It can take the CCAO 3 to 5 weeks to complete an investigation depending on the nature and complexity of your complaint. Any statutory limitation periods that apply to your case will continue to run while the CCAO reviews your complaint, which may impact your ability to begin a civil action.

Our mandate is to review unresolved complaints involving CIBC and its group of companies (collectively CIBC). We try to resolve disputes fairly through an independent and thorough investigation. Recommendations are non-binding and parties are free to pursue other avenues if a settlement is not reached.

The cases brought to our office allow us to identify areas, products and services where changes might be made to enhance the service to our clients. To this end, the CIBC Client Complaint Appeals Office communicates regularly with CIBC's senior business leaders to highlight opportunities for improvement.

How we can help:

If you have an unresolved issue with CIBC, we may be able to help if the following criteria have been met:

• You have followed CIBC's Complaint Process and CIBC has completed its review and provided you with a final response
• The matter has not been referred to a law firm or litigation has not been initiated by you or CIBC
• The issue falls within our mandate

Our Process:

• We will acknowledge your request within 2 business days
• We will send you the terms associated with our investigation
• Most investigations are concluded within 3 to 5 weeks. However, some issues take longer than others, and we will keep you informed of our progress
• Upon completion of our investigation we will provide you with a written response
• Any recommendations we make are non-binding and parties are free to accept or reject them, and pursue other options for resolution

Issues outside of our mandate:

Some banking issues fall outside of the Office's mandate. These include:

• Product pricing and the setting of interest rates (including lending, investment and foreign exchange rates)
• The setting of service fees (including, but not limited to, NSF fees and mortgage prepayment costs)
• Lending decisions and credit adjudication*
• CIBC divestiture decisions and trespass orders*
• Matters that CIBC has referred to outside legal counsel or that are in litigation. If a client decides to pursue legal action during the course of our investigation, we may cease our investigation
• Credit bureau ratings - except where CIBC has made an administration error causing an incorrect credit bureau rating
• Day-to-day business decisions - i.e. introducing, withdrawing or amending a product or service, or other matters relating to general CIBC policy

In addition:

• Access to CIBC records are subject to record retention periods, which typically do not exceed 7 years
• We do not offer legal or regulatory opinions or advice

* In these cases, the Office will only investigate whether CIBC has followed proper process and whether the client has been given sufficient notice of the bank's decision.