Soon-to-be ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor at the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB), Robert Le Hunte wants to im­prove the lives of this coun­try’s cit­i­zens.

And al­so, those of the re­gion.

“This ap­point­ment is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to give back to the re­gion by serv­ing,” Le Hunte told the Busi­ness Guardian.

And as he pre­pares to take up his new post­ing on Ju­ly 1, in Wash­ing­ton DC, Re­pub­lic Bank’s for­mer ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor for Ghana said the goals of the IDB are very much aligned to that of his own which are peo­ple-cen­tric.

The cur­rent man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of ANSA Bank will as­sume re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the Caribbean con­stituen­cy com­pris­ing the five Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean coun­tries that are mem­bers of the IDB—Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, Ba­hamas, Guyana, and T&T.

Delv­ing fur­ther in­to what the job means for this coun­try, Le Hunte said the IBD’s fo­cus is on digi­ti­sa­tion among oth­er of­fer­ings.

“My role will be to en­sure the dif­fer­ent agen­das of the dif­fer­ent coun­tries with­in the re­gion achieve their ob­jec­tives as best as pos­si­ble,” he said.

But the IDB is much more than just a fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion which lends mon­ey.

Ac­cord­ing to the for­mer pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter, it of­fers a host of trans­for­ma­tion­al so­lu­tions.

“The IDB al­so pro­vides con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices to help re­solve is­sues. They are not just about giv­ing mon­ey. How­ev­er, the IDB al­so has a lot of re­quire­ments and checks and bal­ances to en­sure that the mon­ey is prop­er­ly utilised for what it’s bor­rowed for,” Le Hunte added.

And with the goal to de­vel­op a more ad­vanced re­gion, Le Hunte ad­vised there must be an ac­tive pri­vate sec­tor; one that is not on­ly large but one that could al­so take on board mean­ing­ful projects.

For in­stance, Le Hunte ref­er­enced that di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion is of­ten bandied about but he said this can­not be achieved sole­ly by gov­ern­ments.

“It must al­so be dri­ven by the pri­vate sec­tor,” Le Hunte em­pha­sised adding, “And then there’s the ques­tion as to what you di­ver­si­fy in­to?”

Hence, with his vast ex­per­tise in com­mer­cial bank­ing, Le Hunte said he could, there­fore, as­sist the pri­vate sec­tor with­in the re­gion to look at dif­fer­ent types of ini­tia­tives and help in struc­tur­ing fi­nanc­ing from the IDB to de­vel­op plans to di­ver­si­fy away from “a present, sin­gle fo­cus.”

“Whether it’s in Trinidad with oil, whether it’s in Bar­ba­dos whose fo­cus is pri­mar­i­ly on tourism; how could we then en­sure that our economies in the re­gion move away from one sim­ple fo­cus and have a more di­verse in­come stream and the role that the pri­vate sec­tor could play in that I see as crit­i­cal,” Le Hunte fur­ther ex­plained.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, his work at the IDB will al­so ex­am­ine how the pri­vate sec­tor could ex­pand by us­ing some of the ser­vices from the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion, adding that there are al­so small busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties with­in that win­dow.

Not­ing that SMEs re­main crit­i­cal to any econ­o­my, not on­ly re­gion­al­ly but al­so in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, Le Hunte said this sec­tor con­tin­ues to em­ploy a num­ber of peo­ple.

“Em­ploy­ment gen­er­a­tion is crit­i­cal to the re­gion. There­fore, in the small busi­ness win­dow of the IDB it is some­thing that I will want to ac­tive­ly look at and how it could al­so sup­port that par­tic­u­lar growth,” Le Hunte added.

Fo­cus­ing gen­er­al­ly on the re­gion, Le Hunte said most of the mem­ber coun­tries that he will be called up­on to rep­re­sent of­ten have sim­i­lar-type prob­lems like the chal­lenges they con­tin­ue to face from COVID-19.

Al­so, Le Hunte ex­plained that the amount of mon­ey need­ed to deal with the pan­dem­ic was way above what was ex­pect­ed and this par­tic­u­lar chal­lenge came at a time when a num­ber of coun­tries were not fi­nan­cial­ly pre­pared to deal with such a sit­u­a­tion.

“So, it’s like you got a calami­ty when you your­self are not fi­nan­cial­ly se­cure to deal with it. A lot of the re­gion, the lev­el of debt that we are car­ry­ing was fair­ly high,” Le Hunte said.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Le Hunte iden­ti­fied that Caribbean coun­tries con­tin­ue to face a host of in­fra­struc­tur­al prob­lems which must be ad­dressed.

“For ex­am­ple, in T&T it may be wa­ter while in oth­er parts of the re­gion it might be roads,” Le Hunte said.

And while these prob­lems dif­fer, they re­main the same.

“All of these things I will be look­ing at. The job re­quires me to work close­ly with the gov­er­nors of the re­gions and most of them are the min­is­ters of fi­nance. In T&T’s case, it’s the Min­is­ter of Plan­ning. I will be work­ing close­ly with all of them to use the re­sources of the IDB to help them go to an­oth­er lev­el,” Le Hunte added.

Bring­ing bank­ing

to an­oth­er lev­el

Le Hunte leaves ANSA Bank with con­fi­dence all is in place to en­sure it is trans­formed from a tra­di­tion­al com­mer­cial bank to one that is tech­no­log­i­cal­ly and dig­i­tal­ly dri­ven.

“What we are re­al­ly do­ing is to pro­vide bank­ing ser­vices at a dif­fer­ent lev­el. That project is close to com­ple­tion as a lot has al­ready been done. I am just mak­ing sure that we knock up all the loose ends and en­sure that project will be able to glide in by the third quar­ter,” Le Hunte ex­plained, as he de­scribed his 18 months at ANSA Bank as “very re­ward­ing and ex­cit­ing.”

Ac­cord­ing to Le Hunte, his fo­cus was two-fold; man­ag­ing the lega­cy bank with all its con­straints and en­sur­ing the vi­a­bil­i­ty of the in­sti­tu­tion.

“When we bought Bank of Bar­o­da no mon­ey was spent on tech­nol­o­gy and on ser­vices in that bank.

“So, we had to man­age the lega­cy bank and we had to turn it around and en­sure that it was able to sur­vive, com­pete and pro­vide ser­vices,” Le Hunte ex­plained.

Say­ing that a “tremen­dous job” has thus been ac­com­plished, he said for in­stance, the loan book has al­most tripled in size as well as its cus­tomer base.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Le Hunte said delin­quen­cy has been brought down from about 20 per cent to about three per cent on loans.

Bar­o­da, an In­di­an state-owned fi­nan­cial ser­vices group, be­gan op­er­at­ing in T&T in Oc­to­ber, 2007.

But in 2019, ANSA Mer­chant–a mem­ber of the ANSA McAl Group–signed a share pur­chase agree­ment for 100 per cent in­ter­est in Bank of Bar­o­da T&T Ltd.

And while much has al­ready been done to sta­bilise the lega­cy bank that how­ev­er, was not its fu­ture.

“We al­so had to build an in­sti­tu­tion that would have been able to com­pete in the bank­ing in­dus­try and the bank­ing in­dus­try in Trinidad is dom­i­nat­ed by a few big play­ers. So, if we need­ed to com­pete, we need­ed to do some­thing dif­fer­ent.

“We need­ed to be a dis­rup­tor in the bank­ing sec­tor and we need­ed to look at bank­ing from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive,” Le Hunte ex­plained.

Hence, par­al­lel to run­ning the lega­cy bank a team was de­vel­oped to cre­ate “the bank of the fu­ture” whose work is well ad­vanced and the fruits of that work will be re­vealed when the bank is launched in Sep­tem­ber, Le Hunte said.

But it has not been a one-man show.

“It has been the work of an en­tire team who worked tire­less­ly. That’s why I could leave at this point in time with the project and speak with con­fi­dence as to what we will be launch­ing,” Le Hunte who will be at the IDB for two years said.

So what’s next up­on his re­turn?

It’s to con­tin­ue along the course of ser­vice.

“I am fair­ly con­fi­dent that I am work­ing very fo­cused on the two years in get­ting what I want done. I am al­so anx­ious to come back to T&T to con­tin­ue to con­tribute and use my knowl­edge at the IDB for the bet­ter­ment of the peo­ple and the coun­try,” Le Hunte said.