Sco­tia­bank's lo­cal sub­sidiary said yes­ter­day that it did not have any "de­tailed in­for­ma­tion" on whether any of the bank's 24 T&T branch­es would be closed or any of the bank's 1,377 lo­cal em­ploy­ees would be laid off.

Sco­tia­bank Trinidad is­sued a state­ment yes­ter­day con­cern­ing the press re­lease and con­fer­ence call dis­trib­uted Tues­day by its par­ent com­pa­ny in Toron­to, which out­lined that 35 branch­es in the Caribbean would be closed and 1,500 em­ploy­ees through­out its Cana­di­an and in­ter­na­tion­al net­work ter­mi­nat­ed.

The Guardian had sent the lo­cal cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment of Sco­tia­bank a re­quest for in­for­ma­tion on the lo­cal rel­e­vance of the Toron­to an­nounce­ment on Tues­day morn­ing, about two hours af­ter its re­lease.In its state­ment yes­ter­day, Sco­tia T&T said the re­struc­tur­ing an­nounce­ments on Tues­day were about en­hanc­ing ser­vice to cus­tomers while re­duc­ing struc­tur­al costs.Sco­tia Trinidad ex­plained that in re­cent years,

This an­nounce­ment is about en­hanc­ing ser­vice to our cus­tomers while re­duc­ing struc­tur­al costs.In re­cent years, in­ter­na­tion­al bank­ing has worked to build its mar­ket po­si­tion, both through or­gan­ic growth and se­lec­tive ac­qui­si­tions.That growth has served Sco­tia­bank well, but has al­so cre­at­ed some over­lap and du­pli­ca­tion of ser­vices through­out our foot­print.

"As a re­sult, we un­der­took a re­view of our op­er­at­ing mod­el and in­ter­na­tion­al dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work and found op­por­tu­ni­ties to strength­en our re­tail pres­ence by in­vest­ing in ar­eas that are go­ing to im­prove the speed and qual­i­ty of ser­vice for our cus­tomers."Over the com­ing months, as we move for­ward, we will con­tin­ue to pro­vide our em­ploy­ees and cus­tomers with more in­for­ma­tion.

"This will take some time and there­fore we do not have de­tailed in­for­ma­tion on lo­cal im­pacts at this time."Sco­tia T&T has 24 branch­es and five sales cen­tres spread across the coun­tryComment­ing on this an­nounce­ment, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Sco­tia­bank T&T Anya M Schnoor said: "We have a long his­to­ry in the Caribbean and we re­main the pre-em­i­nent Bank through­out the re­gion."This year we cel­e­brate 125 years of op­er­a­tions in the re­gion and 60 years in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

"We have been im­ple­ment­ing a num­ber of op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy ini­tia­tives for some time in the Caribbean re­gion, and more specif­i­cal­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go and we will con­tin­ue to do so to en­sure that we can pro­vide our cus­tomers with bet­ter ser­vice in the most ef­fi­cient way."In its 2013 an­nu­al re­port, Sco­tia T&T said that its pro­duc­tiv­i­ty ra­tio–its op­er­at­ing ex­pense as a per­cent­age of to­tal rev­enue–was 46.7 per cent, which it said "con­tin­ues to be the best in class amongst our peers in the bank­ing in­dus­try."