Sean Nero

Sco­tia­bank T&T Ltd is in­tro­duc­ing new sys­tems aimed at achiev­ing greater ef­fi­cien­cy in the cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence with quick­er turn arounds.

Chair­man Bren­dan King said the bank's new ap­pli­ca­tion process to open day-to-day ac­counts is be­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­proved and will pro­vide the best cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence among all banks with its glob­al foot­print.

Speak­ing at the bank's re­cent Af­ter­noon with the Chair­man and Part­ner Ap­pre­ci­a­tion at Sco­tia Cen­tre, Port-of-Spain, King said: "The turn­around time to open a small busi­ness ac­count will even­tu­al­ly be re­duced from three weeks to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 min­utes. Even­tu­al­ly, the time it takes to fill out an on­line cred­it card ap­pli­ca­tion will be sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced from eight min­utes to just two min­utes for an in­stant ap­proval de­ci­sion. The en­tire process will be more in­tu­itive and re­quire cus­tomers to an­swer few­er ques­tions."

He said time is be­ing cut in half on mort­gages and wealth ap­pli­ca­tions, free­ing up time for bank staff to pro­vide valu­able ad­vice to cus­tomers.

"The re­sults of these ini­tia­tives are be­ing no­ticed as for the first time ever, Sco­tia­bank has been recog­nised by Re­tail Banker In­ter­na­tion­al as the Glob­al Bank with the best Dig­i­tal Strat­e­gy for 2016. Our strat­e­gy is work­ing and this is great news for our cus­tomers, our em­ploy­ees and our share­hold­ers," he added.

King said the pace of change in al­most all in­dus­tries is ac­cel­er­at­ing, dri­ven by tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ments, pro­lif­er­a­tion of the in­ter­net and the pow­er of mo­bile; chang­ing con­sumer ex­pec­ta­tions and be­hav­iours; mod­er­at­ing eco­nom­ic growth and more strin­gent reg­u­la­tions; and in­tense com­pet­i­tive forces.

The fi­nan­cial ser­vices in­dus­try is not im­mune to those pres­sures and there is an en­tire sub-set of tech­nol­o­gy play­ers mak­ing in­roads in­to the tra­di­tion­al bank­ing sec­tor, he said.

"In or­der to meet the chang­ing ex­pec­ta­tions of the mar­kets the bank has es­tab­lished a clear strate­gic agen­da. Dig­i­tal trends and chang­ing cus­tomer pref­er­ences are re-shap­ing the role of our branch net­work.

"Our cus­tomers in­creas­ing­ly per­form rou­tine trans­ac­tions such as bal­ance en­quires, bill pay­ments and re­mote de­posits on­line, at the ATM and through their mo­bile de­vices.

"By 2020, we ex­pect that less than ten per cent of fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions will oc­cur in our glob­al branch net­work. At the same time, we ex­pect sales through dig­i­tal chan­nels to in­crease ma­te­ri­al­ly, like­ly in ex­cess of 50 per cent of to­tal prod­ucts sold," King said.

"Our cus­tomers con­tin­ue to tell us they val­ue face-to-face in­ter­ac­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to mak­ing larg­er fi­nan­cial de­ci­sions. Our branch net­work will con­tin­ue to be an im­por­tant chan­nel to serve cus­tomers, but it must adapt and evolve. To this end, we are re-de­sign­ing our branch­es to pro­vide fi­nan­cial ad­vice more ef­fec­tive­ly and to con­duct the de­clin­ing vol­ume of day-to-day trans­ac­tions more ef­fi­cient­ly."

King said new branch for­mats have al­ready been rolled out in Mex­i­co City and sim­i­lar branch­es were be­ing launched in Cana­da. The new branch for­mats will be in­tro­duced through­out the Caribbean, start­ing in Bar­ba­dos in the next six months, then in T&T.

The branch­es are de­signed to be small­er and staffed dif­fer­ent­ly, the chair­man said, even as he as­sured that Sco­tia­bank will not en­ter­tain lay-off con­cerns.He said the mod­ernised branch­es will be bet­ter or­gan­ised and equipped for the ben­e­fit of cus­tomers and em­ploy­ees.