Rapheal John-Lall

Karen Dar­basie, First Cit­i­zens' first fe­male CEO, be­lieves gen­der should not be a cri­te­ria for job se­lec­tion and re­cruit­ment must be done based on skill.

"When I was se­lect­ed for the role of Group CEO of First Cit­i­zens, the fact that I was to be the first fe­male CEO of the group did not oc­cur to me. In fact, I be­lieve, and I am sure that this was the case here, that gen­der should not be a con­sid­er­a­tion in the se­lec­tion process for any job and can­di­dates should be eval­u­at­ed on their skills and ex­pe­ri­ence and what they will bring to the job," she told the Busi­ness Guardian last week Tues­day at First Cit­i­zens Cor­po­rate Cen­tre, Queen's Park East, Port-of-Spain.

De­spite this view, Dar­basie said she is proud to be the first fe­male CEO of the bank and ar­gues that the glass ceil­ing for many women still has not been bro­ken.

"Hav­ing said that, I am proud to be the first fe­male CEO ex­act­ly be­cause of the sig­nal it sends to oth­er women that they can and should al­ways as­pire to be the best they can and want to be in what­ev­er sphere they are in.

"While I be­lieve ad­vances have been made, I would not say the 'glass ceil­ing' has been bro­ken. I be­lieve in many ar­eas, women are held to a high­er stan­dard in or­der to get the recog­ni­tion and ad­vance­ment they de­serve."

Dar­basie suc­ceed­ed Lar­ry Nath, the im­me­di­ate past CEO of First Cit­i­zens, who re­signed sud­den­ly in De­cem­ber 2014, for rea­sons that have nev­er been ful­ly ex­plained.

She joined First Cit­i­zens on April 7 and has 21 years in bank­ing in cor­po­rate and mer­chant bank­ing.

Dar­basie has a wide range of ex­pe­ri­ence in the bank­ing sec­tor.

"Im­me­di­ate­ly be­fore First Cit­i­zens, I was at Citibank in a com­bi­na­tion of ca­pac­i­ties. I had run the mer­chant bank since 1998 but I joined Citibank in 1994. I was head of mer­chant bank­ing, coun­try trea­sur­er cov­er­ing T&T, Bar­ba­dos and the Ba­hamas and the mar­ket head which is a role that han­dles all of the trad­ing prod­ucts of the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion like for­eign ex­change, se­cu­ri­ty and cap­i­tal mar­kets."

She said the trea­sury func­tion taught her a great deal in terms of un­der­stand­ing how a bank op­er­ates and how its bal­ance sheet is fund­ed.

"Look­ing at the var­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties that come in­to the bank and man­ag­ing the bank's bal­ance sheet is one of the key func­tions that has giv­en me a lot of broad-scope ex­pe­ri­ence that I will hope to bring," she said.

She added: "I now have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to grow what I think is a ma­jor, in­dige­nous fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion in T&T and the wider Cari­com mar­ket."

Dar­basie, 50, has two chil­dren and said she in­tends to stay at First Cit­i­zens un­til her re­tire­ment.

She has an en­gi­neer­ing de­gree from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) and worked in the en­gi­neer­ing de­part­ment of TSTT up un­til 1994. Citibank want­ed an en­gi­neer with an MBA and Dar­basie was hired to work at Citibank as she thought that her ed­u­ca­tion­al back­ground blend­ed well with what the bank want­ed.

"If you look at my re­sume, I worked for two in­sti­tu­tions all my life: Tel­co/TSTT and then Citibank. My plans are that this is where I am re­tir­ing from. I am plan­ning to be here and to grow this in­sti­tu­tion," she said.

Dar­basie's un­cle was the late Frank Ram­per­sad, who served as Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Fi­nance. Her fa­ther Reynold Ram­per­sad, rose to the po­si­tion of PS in the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

Giv­en her back­ground, Dar­basie ad­mits she al­ways want­ed to make a con­tri­bu­tion to pub­lic life well be­fore tak­ing up her po­si­tion at First Cit­i­zens.

Vi­sion

Dar­basie be­lieves that First Cit­i­zens of­fers more than ba­sic bank­ing ser­vices.

"First Cit­i­zens is a fi­nan­cial ser­vices provider. We are not just lo­cat­ed in T&T. We are in Bar­ba­dos, St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent and we have a small op­er­a­tion in Cos­ta Ri­ca. The main share­hold­er of First Cit­i­zens is the Gov­ern­ment of T&T but there is al­so pub­lic own­er­ship through the IPO that was done a few years ago," she said.

She said the bank­ing as­pect is the main part that every­one knows about.

"We al­so have First Cit­i­zens As­set Man­age­ment, we have the Trustee Ser­vices, First Cit­i­zens In­vest­ment Ser­vices and we have the bro­ker­age en­ti­ty. It is a full-ser­vice fi­nan­cial ser­vices provider that has the ca­pac­i­ty to pro­vide a full range of bank­ing ser­vices and for all seg­ments of the mar­ket: con­sumers, re­tail and com­mer­cial which is more of the mid­dle-mar­ket type seg­ment and then the cor­po­rate busi­ness.

"First Cit­i­zens is al­so in­volved in cap­i­tal mar­ket trans­ac­tions for big en­ti­ties in T&T and in the wider Caribbean."

She al­so said First Cit­i­zens is open to cus­tomers from all walks of life, from the per­son who walks off the street in­to the bank to the cor­po­rate client.

"In First Cit­i­zens bank, we cov­er the gen­er­al pub­lic through the re­tail bank­ing net­work. We al­so cov­er the com­mer­cial space, and the cor­po­rate space so in the bank it­self we pro­vide ser­vices for the full range of clients.

"In First Cit­i­zens In­vest­ment Ser­vices, we deal with the in­vestor part of the pub­lic and han­dling some of the in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties that are avail­able both again for in­di­vid­u­als as well as for cor­po­rate.

"First Cit­i­zens As­set Man­age­ment has a full range of clients that span from very small in­vestors who put mon­ey in the mon­ey mar­ket fund up to large in­sti­tu­tion­al in­vestors who would deal with the in­sti­tu­tion. We want to be a full ser­vice provider for the cross sec­tion of clients of the com­mu­ni­ty," she said.

She said First Cit­i­zens is the best rat­ed in­dige­nous bank in the Caribbean.

"Our in­vest­ment grade rat­ing with Moody's just reaf­firmed we are the best rat­ed in­dige­nous bank. It is some­thing that is crit­i­cal to us, it is some­thing that sep­a­rates us from the com­pe­ti­tion."

She said be­ing an in­dige­nous, home­grown in­sti­tu­tion gives them a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive in the mar­ket.

"My stake­hold­ers are not just my cus­tomers, my clients, my share­hold­ers, but al­so the gen­er­al pub­lic of T&T and to try to cre­ate the cor­rect bal­ance in all of those stake­hold­ers in grow­ing the in­sti­tu­tion and in do­ing the busi­ness that we do."

She ar­gues that fi­nan­cial prod­ucts cre­at­ed by First Cit­i­zens are no way in­fe­ri­or to any­thing cre­at­ed by for­eign-owned bank­ing in­sti­tu­tion.

"Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans are bright well-ed­u­cat­ed peo­ple. I can point peo­ple to the First Cit­i­zens elec­tron­ic bank­ing plat­form which I think is a su­pe­ri­or prod­uct that of­fers so­lu­tions that is not just equiv­a­lent but su­pe­ri­or in sev­er­al as­pects to of­fer­ings that are avail­able from oth­er in­sti­tu­tions in the mar­ket. It is one of the points of pride that the in­sti­tu­tion has. It is lo­cal­ly grown plat­form that the bank has worked on over time. It is ac­tu­al­ly one of the pil­lars that we will be us­ing go­ing for­ward," she said.

This is as a re­sult of bank­ing that is now more In­ter­net dri­ven.

"This adds ef­fi­cien­cy in­stead of brick and mor­tar. The plat­form al­lows our cus­tomers to ac­cess the ser­vices that we of­fer with­out get­ting out or leav­ing their homes. It pro­vides a seam­less ser­vice that cus­tomers can ac­cess from any­where they are. This is one of the pil­lars for not just cre­at­ing great cus­tomer ser­vice but for al­so cre­at­ing ef­fi­cien­cy for our cus­tomers," she said.

She as­sured cus­tomers that the fi­nan­cial group's on­line plat­forms are safe.

"Da­ta pri­va­cy and com­pli­ance meet all the re­quire­ments and we make sure that the plat­form is se­cure from hack­ing and peo­ple's per­son­al in­for­ma­tion is kept con­fi­den­tial."

Bank's per­for­mance

Speak­ing about the last fi­nan­cial year, she said the bank's per­for­mance was very good.

Ac­cord­ing to the speech of First Cit­i­zens' chair­man, An­tho­ny Smart, at the an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing in March, at the close of the fi­nan­cial year end­ing Sep­tem­ber 2014, First Cit­i­zens achieved a be­fore-tax prof­it of $772.6 mil­lion, a 3.7 per cent in­crease over the $744.7 mil­lion prof­it the bank record­ed in 2013.

The af­ter-tax prof­it was $626.6 mil­lion. That is a 2.9 per cent growth com­pared to 2013.

Be­cause she has just start­ed, she said she is un­able to be spe­cif­ic on some pol­i­cy mea­sures but not­ed that she is at the stage of speak­ing to all de­part­ment heads.

"I am sit­ting with each of my busi­ness heads and their sup­port­ing teams to first un­der­stand their busi­ness and what we have done in the past that made us very suc­cess­ful, what ideas they have for the fu­ture, what op­por­tu­ni­ties they re­al­ly see and then to try to take all these ideas that some up and col­late them and see how we move for­ward," she said.

Speak­ing about fu­ture ex­pan­sion of First Cit­i­zens, she said the bank is al­ways look­ing for new op­por­tu­ni­ties.

"At this stage, I need to un­der­stand what is there first be­fore I get start­ed. I am re­al­ly try­ing to un­der­stand ex­act­ly what makes the in­di­vid­ual busi­ness­es suc­cess­ful and to take that in­for­ma­tion and look at it from a broad­er per­spec­tive with the ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment team.

"This First Cit­i­zens team is very ex­pe­ri­enced and I'll be lean­ing on all the ex­pe­ri­ence that is there. It is that ex­pe­ri­ence that has re­sult­ed in the suc­cess of that in­sti­tu­tion."

Cor­po­rate gov­er­nance

When asked if there are sys­tems in place to pre­vent the scan­dal that erupt­ed over the 2013 First Cit­i­zens IPO, she said cor­po­rate gov­er­nance plays a crit­i­cal part in First Cit­i­zens cul­ture.

"I would say even pri­or to my com­ing in, the poli­cies and pro­ce­dures of the in­sti­tu­tion were re­viewed by man­age­ment and we are in the process of mak­ing sure that every­thing that was there is suf­fi­cient to ad­dress any fu­ture un­der­tak­ing and to en­sure that we hold our­selves to the high­est stan­dards of in­tegri­ty be­cause we are the repos­i­to­ry of clients' con­fi­dence.

"Clients' con­fi­dence in a bank is the most im­por­tant sin­gle at­tribute that any of us can hope to keep and that is some­thing that we ful­ly in­tend to main­tain and to en­sure that all our cor­po­rate gov­er­nance poli­cies and pro­ce­dures give every­one the con­fi­dence that in­tegri­ty is be­ing up­held."

When asked what is her po­si­tion on what hap­pened with the last IPO, she de­clined to give any spe­cif­ic com­ments as she said it oc­curred be­fore she came to the bank.

"First­ly, all the in­for­ma­tion on that is al­ready in the pub­lic do­main. It is wide­ly re­port­ed by the me­dia and it is be­ing looked at by every­one."