Sean Nero

The new­ly launched Re­pub­lic AAd­van­tage Visa In­fi­nite cred­it card is de­signed to meet the needs of an un­der-served, but high-end clien­tele.

This was re­vealed Tues­day's launch of the so­phis­ti­cat­ed trav­el-re­lat­ed card at Fa­nat­ic Kitchen, Dere Street, Port-of-Spain. An­tho­ny Wong, Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd's (RBL) gen­er­al man­ag­er for elec­tron­ic chan­nels and pay­ments said the bank saw it as its du­ty to con­tin­ue to pro­vide high cal­i­bre prod­ucts and ser­vices that sur­pass­es cus­tomer ex­pec­ta­tions.

The first card was pre­sent­ed to Olympic sailor An­drew Lewis.

"The Re­pub­lic Bank AAd­van­tage Visa In­fi­nite Cred­it Card is some­thing that clients will want to own, as it of­fers not on­ly an un­prece­dent­ed ar­ray of ben­e­fits, it al­so af­fords some of the best that both Re­pub­lic Bank and Visa In­ter­na­tion­al have to of­fer," Wong said.

Ben­e­fits of the new card in­clude trip can­cel­la­tion cov­er­age of up to US$3,000, as well as cov­er­age for trav­ellers when trips are de­layed, or a con­nect­ing flight is missed, in the amount of US$300 in each in­stance. Apart from the price pro­tec­tion fea­ture of up to US$4,000 per ac­count per an­num, there is pur­chase pro­tec­tion in­sur­ance, not ex­ceed­ing US$20,000.

"As you have seen and most def­i­nite­ly will see, the Re­pub­lic Bank AAd­van­tage Visa In­fi­nite cred­it card is a prod­uct quite like no oth­er. With­out ques­tion or reser­va­tion, we of­fer it to you as a so­lu­tion to many of your trav­els con­cerns and as an ex­ten­sion of your ac­tive lifestyle," Wong said.

"The sat­is­fac­tion that Amer­i­can Air­lines, Visa In­ter­na­tion­al and Re­pub­lic Bank feel in bring­ing this prod­uct to life and to you can on­ly be sur­passed by the sat­is­fac­tion you ac­tu­al­ly de­rive from it.

"We tru­ly be­lieve, giv­en all we've shared to­day that this will very well come to be," Wong said.

Der­win How­ell, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor at RBL, said the goal of the bank is to achieve this lev­el of util­i­ty for its clients from in­cep­tion, which is re­alised through col­lab­o­ra­tion with in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners.

"Once again, we have found a way to do that and much more and I thank them for their con­tin­ued com­mit­ment and sup­port. Any new cred­it card that we of­fer to our clients, re­gard­less of the cred­it lim­its and types of re­wards, has to align with their de­sires and needs if the card is to be of any use to them. We have lis­tened to you and to­day we of­fer this new card, as an ex­ten­sion of ser­vice to you, in line with your de­sires and a card tru­ly be­fit­ting of the Re­pub­lic Bank name," he said.

"This comes at a time when we con­tin­ue to re­de­fine our lead­er­ship po­si­tion with­in an in­creas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive lo­cal cred­it card in­dus­try; an in­dus­try that is on­ly three decades or so old, but whose evo­lu­tion and growth has been dy­nam­ic and in which com­pe­ti­tion is ex­treme­ly fierce. There are over 95,000 Re­pub­lic Bank cred­it card in cir­cu­la­tion and each of these is specif­i­cal­ly cen­tered on serv­ing a par­tic­u­lar mar­ket."

While every ma­jor bank has cred­it cards and tai­lors them ac­cord­ing­ly, the mar­ket is not sat­u­rat­ed. How­ell said this high­lights the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­stant­ly re­view, un­der­stand and ad­dress the ever-grow­ing and ever-chang­ing needs of clients and to pro­vide tar­get­ed prod­ucts to meet those needs.

"We ex­am­ined our cur­rent range of cred­it card prod­ucts and ser­vices and con­clud­ed that our high val­ue, fre­quent trav­el­ling clients need­ed more in the way of an ac­tu­al prod­uct adapt­ed to their lifestyles. The Re­pub­lic Bank AAd­van­tage Visa In­fi­nite Cred­it Card fits that bill and will open new vis­tas to our val­ued clients who use the card," How­ell said.