The steps banks are tak­ing to gear up for dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and the sup­port that is be­ing made avail­able to small­er-scale busi­ness­es op­er­at­ing in the non-oil econ­o­my were among the top­ics ex­plored by Nigel M. Bap­tiste, pres­i­dent and CEO of Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Lim­it­ed, in a wide-rang­ing in­ter­view he gave to Ox­ford Busi­ness Group’s on­line broad­cast­ing chan­nel, Glob­al Plat­form.

In the in­ter­view, which is now avail­able to view in full at https://ox­ford­busi­ness­group.com/video/nigel-m-bap­tiste-pres­i­dent-and-ceo-re­pub­lic-fi­nan­cial-hold­ings, Bap­tiste high­light­ed the healthy liq­uid­i­ty lev­els of the coun­try’s banks.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go banks prob­a­bly have the high­est cap­i­tal ra­tios in the Caribbean. We av­er­age around a 23.4 per cent cap­i­tal ad­e­qua­cy, which is five per­cent­age points greater than any of the oth­er banks in the oth­er Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries.”

Bap­tiste ac­knowl­edged, how­ev­er, that the Na­tion­al In­vest­ment Fund fixed-in­come bond sale, or­gan­ised by the Min­istry of Fi­nance and aimed at rais­ing $4bil­lion for the gov­ern­ment, would weigh on liq­uid­i­ty lev­els in 2018 and be­yond, al­though he al­so point­ed out that the mon­ey would re­turn to the lo­cal fi­nan­cial sys­tem in time. The bond, which in­cludes stocks in Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Lim­it­ed, along­side oth­er gov­ern­ment as­sets, was over­sub­scribed when launched in Ju­ly, with pack­ages of­fered in a choice of five-year, 12-year and 20-year op­tions.

Bap­tiste al­so told Glob­al Plat­form that the com­pa­ny was chan­nelling con­sid­er­able re­sources in­to dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion, adding that the de­vel­op­ment of high-tech ser­vices would serve as a win-win for both cus­tomers and lenders.

“The bank­ing sec­tor in Trinidad, in par­tic­u­lar, is in­vest­ing very heav­i­ly in new tech­nol­o­gy, whether it be ro­bot­ics or blockchain tech­nol­o­gy, to see how we can en­hance the op­tions that are avail­able to our clients,” he said. “The sec­tor does not view it as com­pe­ti­tion, but as an en­hance­ment for so­ci­ety, be­cause it will al­so help us to re­duce the costs of many trans­ac­tions that we cur­rent­ly en­gage in.”

He added, how­ev­er, that while cash­less ser­vices had many ben­e­fits, in­clud­ing speed and low costs, they al­so pre­sent­ed risks which could not be over­looked.

Turn­ing to an­oth­er top­i­cal is­sue, Bap­tiste said that with e-com­merce un­doubt­ed­ly set to rev­o­lu­tionise busi­ness prac­tices in the fu­ture, banks need­ed to be­come ac­tive par­tic­i­pants in the new way of work­ing or risk be­ing side­lined.

He said that like oth­er lenders in the coun­try, the com­pa­ny had opt­ed to fo­cus on sup­port­ing lo­cal en­ter­pris­es with e-ser­vices, since the broad­er pub­lic was al­ready well catered for.

“Peo­ple are able to open their own e-wal­lets and do their trans­ac­tions with­out the in­volve­ment of banks, so we are try­ing to fa­cil­i­tate e-com­merce with lo­cal busi­ness­es,” he said. “Every com­mer­cial bank in the Caribbean is de­vel­op­ing an e-com­merce plat­form that its re­spec­tive clients can utilise.”

Lo­cal busi­ness­es op­er­at­ing across the econ­o­my, many of which are small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es who sup­port the coun­try’s pri­ma­ry oil and gas pro­duc­ers, have al­so been on the re­ceiv­ing end of most of the loans made avail­able by the banks, ac­cord­ing to Bap­tiste.

“If you look at the dis­tri­b­u­tion of those loans, you will see that they are ac­tu­al­ly even­ly dis­trib­uted across var­i­ous sec­tors,” he said

Marc-An­dré de Blois, OBG’s di­rec­tor of PR and Video Con­tent, said that OBG’s in­ter­view with Bap­tiste was time­ly, giv­en the key role ear­marked for banks in the na­tion­al dri­ve to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my.

“Busi­ness con­fi­dence is on the rise in Trinidad and To­ba­go, buoyed by signs of re­cov­ery, which, while sup­port­ed by high­er oil prices, al­so sug­gest that re­forms are gain­ing trac­tion,” he said.

“With more still to be done in tar­get­ed sec­tors des­ig­nat­ed as ripe for growth, our in­ter­view pro­vides a fas­ci­nat­ing snap­shot of the coun­try’s chang­ing eco­nom­ic land­scape and the part that the fi­nan­cial ser­vices in­dus­try is play­ing in dri­ving those changes for­ward.”