Bizsmart

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bizSmart was one of the first virtual banks to be opened in Canada during the dot-com era. Its concept was to provide service through bank machines, Web and telephone service, and to provide a human presence by subletting space at retail stores such as Staples]. As the small business electronic banking offering through CIBC, it shares many of the CIBC's systems including the Automated Teller Machine (ATM) infrastructure.

Its model of customer interaction mostly though automated systems turned out make it difficult to provide efficient customer service through a call center, and thus strained its profitability, and it was absorbed back into CIBC's mainstream small business offering. bizSmart operated briefly, and stopped accepted new applications on November 7, 2002.

Bizsmart provided no-fee business banking apparently intending to rely on over-draft interest charges to cover operating costs and profits. Low interest rates and the lack of service charges contributed to its lack of profitability. The bank cancelled all existing accounts effective November 30, 2006. The idea that the Bizsmart banking system run by CIBC bank was unprofitable would not likely stand up to close scrutiny of its books. In fact many businesses had considerable balances in there accounts for extended periods of time, these considerable sums CIBC had use of for investment purposes yet paid no interest on this money to its customer base. Free money, excluding the small transaction costs associated with internet services provided. No human transactions within the bank were permitted with a Bizsmart account. The reason the accounts are being terminated is most likely due to CIBC seeing there chance to make a greater profit by getting these growing and profitable accounts back into the fold so to speak.