Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the First Cit­i­zens Group Karen Dar­basie has been ap­point­ed as the new pres­i­dent of the Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (BATT).

She takes up the man­tle from im­me­di­ate past pres­i­dent Nigel Bap­tiste, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor, Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd and brings over two decades of bank­ing ex­per­tise to her new po­si­tion.

Dar­basie will serve as BATT’s pres­i­dent for the next two years.

Dur­ing her in­au­gur­al speech Dar­basie re­it­er­at­ed the im­por­tance of the lo­cal bank­ing sec­tor and its wide­spread im­pact do­mes­ti­cal­ly.

She al­so af­firmed her in­tent to en­sure that this im­pact is al­ways con­sid­ered in BATT’s de­lib­er­a­tions and en­deav­ours.

Dar­basie not­ed sev­er­al ar­eas that BATT will give pri­or­i­ty to, in­clud­ing a push for the speedy pas­sage of leg­is­la­tion to sat­is­fy glob­al stan­dards and work on the trans­paren­cy and ex­change of in­for­ma­tion for tax pur­pos­es.

BATT is al­so seek­ing to en­sure the im­ple­men­ta­tion of com­mon agreed mea­sures against mon­ey laun­der­ing and fi­nan­cial ter­ror­ism.

Dar­basie said the or­gan­i­sa­tion will con­tin­ue its Know Your Cus­tomer—KYC-Blockchain ini­tia­tive, which will re­sult in all banks shar­ing one cus­tomer data­base for greater ef­fi­cien­cies across the board and cost sav­ings.

BATT’s ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Kel­ly Bute-Seaton who al­so spoke un­der­scored the in­te­gral role of the banks to this coun­try’s so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.

Bute-Seaton said Dar­basie will con­tin­ue to ad­vance BATT’s ef­forts in strength­en­ing the bank­ing sec­tor and the wider fi­nan­cial ser­vices in­dus­try.

Dar­basie joined First Cit­i­zens four years ago, af­ter a suc­cess­ful tenure at Citibank where she served as its first fe­male man­ag­ing di­rec­tor.

Her ap­point­ment as first fe­male chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the First Cit­i­zens Group, has been marked by sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ments such as a group-wide or­gan­i­sa­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion ex­er­cise, and sig­nif­i­cant ef­forts to­ward the ad­vance­ment of women and girls.