Doing The Right Thing

Nova Scotia News:

It’s Friday. Carole-Ann Miller hurries out to the reception area of Maple Trade Finance’s offices. The offices are on the 7th floor of the Cornwallis Tower at the corner of Spring Garden Road and Queen Street. The huge glass windows look out over the Halifax Harbour.

Miller is the company’s co-founder and president. She is wearing a grey power suit, grey high-heeled shoes and a black T-shirt with Dolce & Gabbana emblazoned across the front.

On the left side of her chest sits a silver spider broach glistening with an assortment of jewels. She is worried about a crane accident in New York, fearing it may be owned by one of her construction clients. She leads the way into her corner office.

In stark contrast to her corporate appearance, her office looks like a creche. Colourful children’s paintings cover the walls, a couple of them saying “I love Mom.” There’s also some pottery, which too seems to have been made and painted by children.

In 2001 Miller and her husband, Michael, started Atlantic Trade Finance, a transactional lending business. Despite having two daughters, Samantha and Alyssa, then aged 5 and 3 respectively, and a mortgage, both Carole-Ann and Michael quit their jobs to start the business; Carole-Ann was the president of IFS Financial Services and Michael had a job in IT.

While at CIBC, Miller said she would get a phone call at least once a week from a branch manager or an account manager saying, “Carole-Ann I’ve got this really good client, they need more money for whatever reason. I can’t get it through credit because the balance sheet won’t support the bump-up request. Can you try and get it through?”

Despite the fact that they were good clients with a good product and a good buyer, nine out of 10 times Miller was forced to say no.

“I became increasingly frustrated at seeing these really good opportunities that the bank just wasn’t able to finance,” says Miller. “That’s why we started it, because I thought there was a whole market out there that wasn’t being adequately serviced.”