Kerry McCluskey
Northern News Services

IQALUIT (Dec 07/98) - Bev Tanner is in a bit of a penny pinch.

It seems that the Royal Bank in Iqaluit is incredibly low on pennies and the manager of customer services has to come up with a solution -- and the answer isn't as easy as just picking up the phone and ordering more from the south.

"It costs $200 to bring in $100 of pennies because of the cargo rates," says Tanner.

At those prices, flying pennies into Iqaluit is a no-win situation, so she had to come up with a creative and closer-to-home answer to loosen the grip the copper shortage has on her bank.

Comically dubbed "Where have all the pennies gone?," Tanner's campaign involves asking everybody in Iqaluit who has a huge jar of pennies just sitting around and collecting dust at home to drop by the bank, pick up some penny rollers and exchange the badly needed coins for hard, cold cash.

"We want people to bring the pennies back to us. There's got to be pennies out there," says Tanner, who explains that new pennies are brought into the town on a fairly regular basis and are given out to customers, but the customers are not recirculating the coins.

"Other money is recycled through the bank to the customers, to the stores and it comes back again, but we don't see the pennies."

And, she says, the situation has become pressing enough that the bank is having difficulty meeting the change requirements of local businesses.

One would think the answer would be a matter of crossing the street and asking the Bank of Montreal for a loan, but it appears that the shortage isn't confined to the Royal Bank.

Rob Aube, the manager of financial services at the Bank of Montreal, says his institution only recently ended its own four-week shortage and the tellers have been instructed to be cautious with the penny supply.

"We're OK now...we're all in it together and we've helped out in the past, but we don't have a huge supply now," says Aube, who adds that Tanner's strategy is a good one.

Since launching the campaign in August, Tanner says the elusive coins have started to trickle in, but more are needed.

With the Royal Bank for more than two decades, Tanner is surprised by the persistent lack of pennies. She says she's never seen a coin shortage -- and this one started in June -- take hold and last for so long.

"Down south, I've been in branches where there have been dime shortages, but it doesn't usually last this long."

So, if you're a penny hoarder and you've got $10 or $15 worth of coins lying around, do the community a favour and bring your pennies in. Otherwise, customers may feel the added cost of having to ship the pennies up.

"We want to save costs. We don't want to pass those on to our customers."