Derek M Smith Email & Phone Number

Oakville, On, Ca

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

With a proven track record in consulting, I have empowered our clients to digitize legacy systems, accelerate product development, and unify data across business cycles. Our collaborative efforts have significantly optimized business strategies, leading to enhanced customer experiences and increased profitability within the highly dynamic sectors of Commercial, Small Business, and Fintech.One Equifax Award Q2 2024One Equifax Award Q4 2023One Equifax Award Q3 2023 One Equifax Award Q3 2022

Toronto, Canada Area

“Large clients are always interested in what is happening in Commercial, Small Business and Fintechs. Those questions generate discussion about how to digitize paper-based processes, develop products faster and the consolidation of data across the account lifecycle. My focus is helping clients define optimum scores, processes and strategies for their businesses.”

Oakville Ontario

Contracted to provide a Canadian-based data supplier to credit bureaus seeking to bypass credit bureau distributors and develop in-house capability for compliance and KYC for small businesses.Utilized existing products merging to build a compliance scorecard prior to a deep dive data retrieval tagging to risk, compliance or enhancement.Created a prioritized roadmap to acquire new data sets to support a new designed risk and compliance interface.Boosted client’s ability to sell the same products by $10, increasing direct to customer cost from $20 to $30.Charged to revamp a Fintech customer’s small business loan application flow experiencing application abandonment issues.Revamped work flow, heightening the number of available inputs for the Risk Department to make more accurate credit decisions while completing approval cycle in a shorter timeframe.Mapped processes with input from the CEO and credit team making recommendations to instantly change processes and set a plan for long-term integrations.Currently awaiting the client’s relaunch of new process forecasted to boost employer / client workflow and generate fewer abandoned deals.

Toronto, Canada Area

Appointed as the first risk management professional, mandated to fortify compliance and solidify unsophisticated and undocumented risk management work previously distributed across various business units.Planned and built a robust risk management and well documented platform with strengthened controls, oversight and procedures.Authored new policies and procedures for loan approval to loan funding, and delivered staff training.Reinvigorated trust and respect from existing lenders and tightened lending application due diligence, preventing findings from compliance audits.Conducted a gap analysis creating a priority-based structure to capture the biggest wins to elevate approval rate, lower losses and reinforce credit decisions.Rapidly completed a demanding project-based workload in 14 months over the intended 2 years finalizing connections to secondary credit bureau, new credit score analysis, and development and deployment of an underwriting strategy, database redesign and borrower segmentation.Devised and executed a radical shakeup of risk management touching many facets of the business, collaborating with cross-functional staff to heighten their awareness of risk governance compliance.

Mississauga, Oakville, Brampton

Refreshed curriculum by integrating current business cases and shifting content to a global focus, setting new standards for finance courses.Rolled out online finance courses to generate interest from international students and boost enrollment levels.

Toronto, Canada Area

Tasked to review lending control standards, monitoring and training as Chase Canada failed to meet lending authority guidelines with 2 unsuccessful audits.Designed a new Canadian control framework consistent with manual lending decisions, driving a notable uplift in the quality of manual decisions and increasing accountability.Teamed with operations lending staff to designate credit limits by position supported with increased staff training and quality assurance controls.Lowered lending decision audit findings from 13 to zero gaining acknowledgement from the US parent for exemplary work later adopted across the US.Asked to detect causes for the Chase Executive Office receiving a record amount of credit bureau complaints.Worked alongside Executive Office staff to maximize tracking and granularity of complaints detecting 14 gaps requiring closing, rapidly reducing credit bureau complaints from 20 to <5 per month.Automated the Credit Risk Committee report compiled and distributed each month taking weeks to complete causing a high potential for errors and omissions.Collaborated with reporting and IT teams to redesign and standardize the reports reducing risk, tightening accuracy and delivering the report earlier.Assigned to resolve issues stemming from the Equifax Citadel fraud product consistently missing implementation deadlines due to lack of communication between vendor and JP Morgan development teams.Reviewed project scope, increased dialogue and collaboration between the parties creating a weekly touchpoint, realigning Equifax leadership to their mandate, returning the floundering project back on track.Requested additional test cases and developed the quality assurance automation process, steering the project back to a successful on time conclusion.

Selected to unravel and simplify the complex Commercial Credit Score developed by a GE Data Scientist for Account Managers during risk assessment.Introduced an easy colour-coded risk model tabulating customer specific pricing to push up profit required from each of the >2,000 customers. Decreased potential losses, raised open and frank customer communication and boosted Account Managers ability to identify and report on red flags.Developed and implemented a risk-based pricing approach to raise profitability through increased costs of funds, losses and higher service costs as profits were squeezed.Utilized the colour-coded risk model to boost profit, offsetting losses and maintaining profit during a global economic downturn.Charged with creating a model to provide junior staff with the tools to enter details to score each account susceptible to risk and prioritize from most to least amount of risk. Drafted a spreadsheet for Account Managers to enter financial statement data for the review and account scoring.Heightened the company’s ability to identify high risk accounts and action accordingly triaging the high risk accounts immediately to minimize risk.

Toronto, Canada Area

Inherited a highly complex credit card planning model for third party consultants with a mandate to standardize the internal approach and processes, reduce data input time, and streamline and update the model.Slashed time to update the model from days to hours.Evaluated systems as TD considered acquiring Commerce Bank, exposing major reporting process discrepancies.Standardized the approach to reduce a one-month reporting lag, consolidate a mass of data and account for missing data.Optimized financial performance forecasting and logging performance metrics of the acquired $8.6B portfolio.

Toronto, Canada Area

Awarded numerous high profile and demanding finance transformation projects including forecast reporting and cost management, preparing and delivering monthly presentations.Partnered across the bank with the functional CFO and other stakeholders to advance the projects and meet the challenging targets.

Toronto, Canada Area

Gained recognition as a Subject Matter Expert for new branch performance, retail banking champions club, and finance projects to increase retail volume impact.Completed all due diligence and business case preparation for executive approval to open a new branch.Strategized with the senior Human Resources team to develop a quantitative model.

Toronto, Canada Area

Toronto, Canada Area

Master Of Business Administration - Mba, Business Administration And Management, General

Activities and Societies: Balanced working full time and completing the program successfully.

Bcom, Finance

Worked full time hours while completing my degree around class schedules. Would often open the branch, go to class and then return.

Diploma, Finance