Sean Nero

T&T is an im­por­tant part of Sco­tia­bank's Caribbean and in­ter­na­tion­al net­work as the bank aims to re­main a cred­i­ble leader in the glob­al fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor, Di­eter Jentsch, group head of in­ter­na­tion­al bank­ing, said on Tues­day night.

Speak­ing at a cer­e­mo­ny to mark the bank's 60th an­niver­sary in T&T at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, Jentsch said Sco­tia­bank had a strong in­ter­na­tion­al pres­ence which in­clud­ed a di­ver­si­fied net­work of more than 85,000 em­ploy­ees in more than 55 coun­tries, serv­ing over 20 mil­lion cus­tomers around the world.

He said the fact that T&T was ranked as one of the high­est Caribbean coun­tries in the 2014 World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum Glob­al Com­pet­i­tive­ness Re­port was tes­ta­ment of this coun­try's strength of in­vestor pro­tec­tions, sound bank­ing sys­tem and fo­cus on high­er ed­u­ca­tion train­ing.

"For us, T&T plays a key role even be­yond its bor­ders, op­er­at­ing a pro­cess­ing hub to ser­vice nu­mer­ous coun­tries in our Caribbean foot­print. The es­tab­lish­ment of the Op­er­a­tions and Shared Ser­vices Com­pa­ny Ltd (OS­S­CL) is one of the great ex­am­ples of the on-go­ing part­ner­ship be­tween Sco­tia­bank and the Gov­ern­ment of T&T and nu­mer­ous re­lat­ed agen­cies–Board of In­land Rev­enue, the Cen­tral Bank, T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre and T&T Free Zone Com­pa­ny. To­geth­er, we have cre­at­ed a new busi­ness process out­sourc­ing in­dus­try, which utilis­es the strength of this coun­try, it peo­ple," he said.

"Our in­ter­na­tion­al foot­print is un­matched by any oth­er Cana­di­an bank and the Caribbean has been a ma­jor con­trib­u­tor to our ex­pan­sion over the years. Sco­tia­bank has a long his­to­ry in the Caribbean, open­ing our first branch in the re­gion in 1889–eight years be­fore we even opened our first branch in Toron­to.

"We were ac­tu­al­ly the first Cana­di­an bank to es­tab­lish a branch in the West In­dies, recog­nis­ing ad­vances in eco­nom­ic, po­lit­i­cal and so­cial con­di­tions in the re­gion. In the ear­ly 50's when it be­gan to look like there might be a fed­er­a­tion of the British West In­dies es­tab­lished, Sco­tia­bank ex­pand­ed fur­ther in­to the re­gion."

Anya Schnoor, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Sco­tia­bank T&T, said what made the bank unique was its abil­i­ty to com­bine lo­cal ex­per­tise and glob­al knowl­edge gained from be­ing part of one of the best banks in the world.She said this had al­lowed the bank over the past 60 years to help cus­tomers ac­quire their first home, dream car, open small busi­ness­es and even save for their chil­dren's ed­u­ca­tion.

"It was be­cause of these re­la­tion­ships and our more than 200,000 cus­tomers that Sco­tia­bank has been able to achieve this mile­stone. The strength of any fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion is not on­ly about the size of its bal­ance sheet or its strong cap­i­tal ra­tios, it is al­so about the con­fi­dence you have in your fi­nan­cial part­ner and the strength of each re­la­tion­ship.

"Our core pur­pose at Sco­tia­bank it to make you fi­nan­cial­ly bet­ter off and we re­main com­mit­ted to this promise. Sco­tia­bank has a deep re­la­tion­ship with its cus­tomers and cares about their fi­nan­cial fu­ture."

Schnoor added: "You don't op­er­ate in 21 coun­tries in the re­gion for over 125 years of con­tin­u­ous ser­vice with­out build­ing a sol­id rep­u­ta­tion of trust and se­cu­ri­ty. For Sco­tia­bank here in T&T, this birth­day sig­ni­fies many things, first­ly, our com­mit­ment to the growth and de­vel­op­ment of this coun­try and in­deed the wider Caribbean re­gion.

"We have con­sis­tent­ly been at the fore­front of open­ing up the bank­ing sys­tem to per­sons and re­gions of the coun­try pre­vi­ous­ly un­der­served. We were the first bank in 1963 to of­fer con­sumer loans�Sco­tia Plan Plus as they were pop­u­lar­ly called�to the wider pub­lic there­by al­low­ing ac­cess to fi­nanc­ing for a de­vel­op­ing na­tion."