The Banker’s As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T is ask­ing cus­tomers to lim­it their vis­its to the bank as much as pos­si­ble.

In a re­lease to­day BATT said: “Re­duce your in-Branch trans­ac­tions and make use of your Bank’s dig­i­tal and elec­tron­ic chan­nels; as far as pos­si­ble.”

BATT al­so en­cour­aged cus­tomers to bank on­line or via tele­phone by con­tact­ing their Bank’s Call Cen­tre. It added that clients should avoid the crowd at the Bank­ing halls and use their Bank’s con­ve­nient­ly lo­cat­ed ATM ma­chines.

Lim­it­ing cash trans­ac­tions and us­ing bank cards as much as pos­si­ble was in­clud­ed in the no­tice sent out by the BATT. The As­so­ci­a­tion al­so urged cus­tomers who have symp­toms of the virus to avoid com­ing in­to a bank­ing branch.

The bank not­ed: “If you must vis­it a Branch, be sure to avoid phys­i­cal con­tact with per­sons and lim­it your con­tact with sur­faces with­in the pub­lic space.”

BATT ex­pressed that it has been mon­i­tor­ing the glob­al and re­gion­al de­vel­op­ments as they re­late to the nov­el Coro­na Virus (COVID-19) and it will con­tin­ue to do so with height­ened aware­ness fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment of Trinidad & To­ba­go’s first COVID- 19 case on Thurs­day 12th March 2020, by the Min­is­ter of Health.

BATT re­as­sured cus­tomers that Banks are tak­ing steps to pro­tect its staff and cus­tomers, as far as pos­si­ble, from in­ad­ver­tent­ly con­tract­ing and or spread­ing the virus, as they ac­cess bank­ing ser­vices through­out the coun­try.

The Banks have al­so in­creased their in­ter­nal clean­ing pro­to­col and have made the re­quired san­i­tary pro­vi­sions at each bank.

In keep­ing with the pub­lic ad­vi­sories of the Min­is­ter of Health and oth­er health care of­fi­cials, BATT said that the stan­dard prac­tices and steps for per­son­al pro­tec­tion are to be ob­served when ac­cess­ing bank­ing ser­vices, es­pe­cial­ly if vis­it­ing Bank Branch­es.