BUSI­NESS DESK

Al­most five years af­ter Cana­da's Roy­al Bank of Cana­da (RBC) bought out T&T-based RBTT, RBC is in­tro­duc­ing a se­ries of sweep­ing changes through­out its 25 branch­es, in­clud­ing try­ing to find al­ter­na­tive places for em­ploy­ees whose po­si­tions will be­come re­dun­dant, tak­ing away VIP ser­vice for high net-worth clients and charg­ing $4 for over-the-counter trans­ac­tions.The process of branch�wide con­ver­sion has a name: Wave 1.

A bank em­ploy­ee, who asked not to be iden­ti­fied, said RBC Roy­al Bank has tak­en away its VIP ser­vices, which in­clud­ed a sep­a­rate lounge, re­cent mag­a­zines and pri­vate bankers,��� at nine branch­es and is now ask­ing them to join the queues.In its re­sponse yes­ter­day, RBC Roy­al Bank said: "The bank has tak­en the de­ci­sion to dis­con­tin­ue our VIP ser­vice and to im­ple­ment a ser­vice of­fer­ing that is bet­ter aligned to the needs of our clients which still in­volves di­rect in­ter­face with se­nior re­la­tion­ship of­fi­cers."

These changes are hap­pen­ing against the back­drop of the June 28 res­ig­na­tion of Arvin­der Bharath, mar­ket head of per­son­al bank­ing and wife of Vas­ant Bharath, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try.The Sun­day Guardian re­port­ed on June 9 that Arvin­der Bharath had cit­ed per­son­al rea­sons for her res­ig­na­tion af­ter four years of ser­vice.

Al­so, the em­ploy­ee said the bank, want­i­ng to lim­it the num­ber of walk-in cus­tomers, is grant­i­ng one free trans­ac­tion over the counter, af­ter which they will pay $4 for sub­se­quent over-the-counter ser­vices. The aim is to get more cus­tomers to use the ATMs and free up bank­ing halls.The bank said it was not lim­it­ing the num­ber of walk-in cus­tomers but "of­fer­ing mul­ti­ple op­tions," in­clud­ing greater ATM and In­ter­net use.

Cus­tomers are even re­quired to make an ap­point­ment to open a new ac­count. Re­gard­ing the fee, the bank said it was part of an es­tab­lished in­dus­try prac­tice."Our most re­cent re­view of the prices of the prod­ucts and ser­vices we of­fer re­vealed that, in many in­stances, our prices were one of the low­est in the mar­ket and in sev­er­al in­stances we were not charg­ing at all, un­like oth­er banks," the bank's state­ment stat­ed.

The in­sur­ance prod­uct com­fort plan, which pays out cash on the death of the in­sured, is "be­ing done away with," the em­ploy­ee said. The bank said its com­fort plan and trav­el in­sur­ance ceased to ex­ist from Ju­ly 1 be­cause they were "not di­rect­ly con­nect­ed to lend­ing prod­ucts."

Prepar­ing for con­ver­sion

RBC Roy­al Bank has al­so in­tro­duced what is known as the Com­mon Caribbean Op­er­at­ing Mod­el (CCOM), un­der which a team, head­ed by pro­gramme di­rec­tor Christo­pher Char­ron, has gone in­to the branch­es to pre­pare them for "con­ver­sion," both in ser­vices and in­fra­struc­ture.The branch­es, nine so far, are at St James, Ch­agua­nas, Ch­aguara­mas, San Juan, Pt Lisas, Pointe-a-Pierre, West Mall, Mar­aval and Diego Mar­tin.

The staff mem­ber said some em­ploy­ees' jobs were be­ing made re­dun­dant ow­ing to changes in some ser­vices of­fered at the branch­es. Those who were in­ter­viewed for oth­er in-house va­can­cies, but did not qual­i­fy, were sent to a "tran­si­tion pool" at Park Street, Port-of-Spain, for 90 days, the staff mem­ber said.

The em­ploy­ee said, though, not every­one was wait­ing out the 90 days, so the bank had been of­fer­ing some em­ploy­ees a "pack­age" to go home. An­oth­er em­ploy­ee who went in­to the pool said the pack­age she was even­tu­al­ly of­fered was very good.On that point, the bank said it had de­cid­ed to "ad­just some of our pri­or­i­ties," which in­clud­ed "im­ple­ment­ing a cus­tomer-fac­ing mod­el that meets our clients' needs."

The bank said in 2012, it opened a state-of-the-art client con­tact cen­tre in Ch­agua­nas and an op­er­a­tions and ser­vice de­liv­ery cen­tre at Lon­don Street, Port-of-Spain, which have col­lec­tive­ly cre­at­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300 new roles and an­oth­er 200 were to be cre­at­ed.As for the tran­si­tion pool, the bank said af­fect­ed em­ploy­ees could up­date their re­sum�s and par­tic­i­pate in re­train­ing, which would make them "vi­able can­di­dates" for new op­por­tu­ni­ties.

No more in­sur­ance

There is an­oth­er change com­ing: RBC In­sur­ance Ser­vices (Caribbean) Ltd, agents for Guardian Hold­ings Ltd, will cease to op­er­ate. The 3,500-plus port­fo­lio will be hand­ed over to Guardian Gen­er­al In­sur­ance Ltd be­tween Ju­ly 31 and Au­gust 31.

The bank said the es­tab­lish­ment of the Fi­nan­cial In­sti­tu­tions Act (FIA) es­sen­tial­ly bars fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions from own­ing and op­er­at­ing an in­sur­ance agency lo­cal­ly, which led RBC Roy­al Bank to "dis­con­tin­ue" us­ing a com­pa­ny-owned in­sur­ance agency to pro­vide in­sur­ance ser­vices to its clients. The bank said RBC In­sur­ance would close on Sep­tem­ber 30."No ex­ist­ing pol­i­cy­hold­er will be dis­ad­van­taged by this clo­sure," read the bank's state­ment.

Sev­en em­ploy­ees are be­ing made re­dun­dant as a re­sult. They were sched­uled to meet with RBC Roy­al Bank's hu­man re­source de­part­ment this week to dis­cuss their sep­a­ra­tion pack­ages.

more in­fo

Ac­cord­ing to a No­vem­ber 29, 2012, Bloomberg re­port, RBC prof­it rose 22 per cent.Net in­come for the pe­ri­od end­ed Oc­to­ber 31 was Can$1.91 bil­lion (US$1.93 bil­lion), or Can$1.25 a share, up from Can$1.57 bil­lion, or Can$1.02, a year ear­li­er, the Toron­to-based Lender said in a state­ment. Rev­enue rose 12 per cent to Can$7.52 bil­lion.Roy­al Bank of Cana­da bought RBTT Fi­nan­cial Group in 2007 for US$2.2 bil­lion.

The Cana­di­an bank of­fered $40 (US$6.33) per share, which rep­re­sent­ed an 18 per cent pre­mi­um on the clos­ing price of RBTT shares on Sep­tem­ber 28, 2007. The num­ber of RBC com­mon shares re­ceived by RBTT share­hold­ers is based on a plus/mi­nus ten per cent "col­lar," based on an RBC share price of US$54.42.

RBC com­bined its Caribbean re­tail bank­ing op­er­a­tions–with 46 branch­es and 68 au­to­mat­ed bank­ing ma­chines in nine Caribbean coun­tries–with that of RBTT, which has banks in ten Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean coun­tries, Suri­name, the Nether­lands An­tilles and Aru­ba.The trans­ac­tion re­sult­ed in RBC hav­ing 6,900 em­ploy­ees and more than 1.6 mil­lion clients in 130 branch­es in 18 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries across the re­gion and to­tal as­sets of US$13.7 bil­lion.