Rapheal John-Lall

Sco­tia­bank is ad­vis­ing cus­tomers to plan their cash needs in ad­vance and this will help the bank in meet­ing their for­eign cur­ren­cy need.

In an email re­spons­es to ques­tions from the T&T Guardian about the avail­abil­i­ty of US cur­ren­cy and its cur­rent­ly for­eign ex­change dis­tri­b­u­tion poli­cies, Sco­tia­bank em­pha­sised that there are se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures in place to pro­tect the bank as well as cus­tomers.

"All com­mer­cial banks man­age the sup­ply of US dol­lar cash and its avail­abil­i­ty to their re­spec­tive cus­tomers. This is for nu­mer­ous rea­sons in­clud­ing se­cu­ri­ty, an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing and the cost of hold­ing large quan­ti­ties of cash.

"Sco­tia­bank is com­mit­ted to help­ing meet our cus­tomers' needs and as such, we en­cour­age cus­tomers to plan for cash needs in ad­vance and ad­vise their branch so rel­e­vant arrange­ments can be put in place to help meet their needs."

Sco­tia­bank said the ease of ac­cess­ing US dol­lars de­pends on the needs of the cus­tomer: "Cus­tomers with US dol­lar ac­counts have ac­cess to their funds, al­beit the form of ac­cess varies. For ex­am­ple, with­drawals via draft or wire trans­fer are read­i­ly avail­able, but there may be cer­tain lim­i­ta­tions on with­drawals via phys­i­cal cash.

"It has been a long stand­ing prac­tice in all com­mer­cial banks to man­age the sup­ply of US dol­lar cash in their branch­es and con­se­quent­ly its avail­abil­i­ty to cus­tomers. This is for a va­ri­ety of rea­sons from se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns, an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing re­quire­ments and the cost of hold­ing large quan­ti­ties of cash in what­ev­er cur­ren­cy, in­clud­ing TT dol­lars."

The bank said to con­duct any trans­ac­tion at the bank, in­clud­ing ob­tain­ing US dol­lars, the in­di­vid­ual must be a cus­tomer of the bank.

"Sco­tia­bank is guid­ed by the Know Your Cus­tomers com­pli­ance guide­lines and a per­son must be a cus­tomer of the bank to con­duct any fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tion."

Last week, West­ern Union, a sub­sidiary of Grace Kennedy, im­posed lim­its on in­ter­na­tion­al cur­ren­cy trans­ac­tions un­der which it can on­ly send the equiv­a­lent of US$800 per cus­tomer or US$800 to each per­son to whom mon­ey is be­ing sent. West­ern Union branch­es are al­so has a lim­it­ed in the amount of TT cash that can be sent in trans­ac­tions and once that lim­it is ex­ceed­ed, can on­ly trans­fer US dol­lars un­der es­tab­lished lim­i­ta­tions.

Cus­tomers have com­plained they must now go to the banks and then go to West­ern Union with US cur­ren­cy if they wish to send mon­ey to Chi­na and Colom­bia.