The Cen­tral Bank is aim­ing to be at the fore­front of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion push in 2025.

This was an­nounced by Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Dr Alvin Hi­laire in a doc­u­men­tary fea­tured en­ti­tled “Di­a­mond Ju­bilee - 60 Years of Ser­vice and Ex­cel­lence”.

The fea­ture, which was re­leased on the Bank’s YouTube ac­count on Thurs­day, high­light­ed com­po­nents of the bank’s 60th an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions in 2024. Through­out the doc­u­men­tary, var­i­ous mem­bers of the Cen­tral Bank staff, in­clud­ing the Gov­er­nor, re­flect­ed up­on the jour­ney the in­sti­tu­tion had un­der­gone since be­ing es­tab­lished in 1964.

“The bank has had a lot of things to do and has had a wide man­date from mon­e­tary pol­i­cy, fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty and or­gan­is­ing a whole set of things. So our role has been very clear but it has been al­so very vast. We have had a lot of evo­lu­tion over the years. We are what we con­sid­er a fortress of sta­bil­i­ty but al­so a light­house, a bea­con of hope,” said Gov­er­nor Hi­laire, “A bea­con for the coun­try, a light that is shin­ing through­out and this evo­lu­tion has tak­en us through many phas­es. We have had to weath­er the storm, and surf a lot of waves.”

The gov­er­nor not­ed that the coun­try had gone through sig­nif­i­cant pe­ri­ods of eco­nom­ic tur­moil and po­lit­i­cal up­ris­ings, and de­spite this the Bank has man­aged to main­tain fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty in the coun­try.

“In 1970 we had a coup at­tempt. In 1990 we had a coup at­tempt. We had struc­tur­al ad­just­ment pro­grammes with the IMF, with the World Bank. We’ve had dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion. We’ve had a de­mon­eti­sa­tion. We had ex­change con­trols, a lot of dif­fer­ent things and we’ve had to com­mand our re­sources and be ready to deal with many cir­cum­stances. This is life. We have dif­fer­ent politi­cians; we have dif­fer­ent pol­i­tics; we have dif­fer­ent things to deal with. In­ter­na­tion­al set­tings. This is where we are. This is what we do,” said the gov­er­nor.

Janelle Spencer, a Cen­tral Bank econ­o­mist added that the bank has al­so nav­i­gat­ed fi­nan­cial col­laps­es in the lo­cal eco-sys­tem, which called for pru­dent plan­ning.

“A road map is a crit­i­cal tool for vi­su­al­is­ing the fu­ture that you want to cre­ate and the bank’s cur­rent strate­gic plan has been that road map. Since 2021 it has steered us through nav­i­gat­ing un­fore­seen chal­lenges, in­clud­ing en­er­gy price fluc­tu­a­tions, cur­ren­cy de­mon­eti­sa­tion and the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic,” said Spencer.

“It has al­so seen us through clos­ing a chap­ter as the threats to the fi­nan­cial sys­tem re­ced­ed and al­lowed the bank to ex­it from emer­gency con­trol of Cli­co and BAT (British Amer­i­can In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny) in De­cem­ber 2022.”

How­ev­er, Hi­laire said the Bank had learnt to adapt, and as a re­sult it would be spear­head­ing this coun­try’s dig­i­tal push.

“We have tried to be as mod­ern as pos­si­ble and to cater for new cir­cum­stances. This is why now the Cen­tral Bank is mov­ing in­to dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and we are go­ing to adopt and car­ry the coun­try, along with the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion and the Gov­ern­ment, in­to a new age of fast pay­ments and you’ll hear a lot more of that to come,” he said.

In No­vem­ber, The Cen­tral Bank an­nounced by its pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion se­ries that it was in the process of rolling out a mo­bile-to-mo­bile, fast pay­ments sys­tem along the lines of In­dia’s Uni­fied Pay­ments In­ter­face (UPI).

The Cen­tral Bank said then, that a “pi­lot” is be­ing sched­uled for the first half of 2025 to test the sys­tem in T&T with the aim to have it ful­ly func­tion­al by the end of 2025.

Nicole Crooks, the Cen­tral Bank’s se­nior hu­man re­sources, in­dus­tri­al and ex­ter­nal re­la­tions man­ag­er, said the bank would be plac­ing greater em­pha­sis on pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion as it had recog­nised the need to im­prove the coun­try’s fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy in the past few decades. Crooks ex­plained the bank has in­ten­tions to im­prove in­ter­ac­tions with the pub­lic via its so­cial me­dia chan­nels as well as planned im­prove­ments to its web­site in 2025.

“The Na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Lit­er­a­cy Pro­gramme (NFLP) launched in 2007, fur­ther ex­tend­ed the bank’s pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion­al out­reach. Through the NFLP we took de­ci­sive ap­proach­es to eval­u­at­ing the cur­rent state of fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy na­tion­al­ly and the in­sights of our third Na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Lit­er­a­cy Sur­vey in 2022 al­lowed us to as­sess the im­pact of our in­ter­ven­tions. We will in­ten­si­fy our ef­forts at im­prov­ing the fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy of our cit­i­zens with a spe­cial fo­cus on the most vul­ner­a­ble,” said Crooks in the fea­ture.

She ex­plained the pan­dem­ic in 2020 and 2021, in par­tic­u­lar, taught the in­sti­tu­tion sig­nif­i­cant lessons which have guid­ed its ap­proach.

“Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, our com­mu­ni­ca­tion ap­proach was re-en­er­gised and we launched an in­no­v­a­tive se­ries of we­bi­na­rs ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic via our web­site and so­cial me­dia plat­forms. This dig­i­tal piv­ot sig­nif­i­cant­ly ex­pand­ed the bank’s reach, al­so en­abling broad­er pub­lic en­gage­ment through vir­tu­al mu­se­um tours and on­line ex­hi­bi­tions. We con­tin­ue to build on this with im­pact­ful cam­paigns such as ‘Know Your Mon­ey’ and we look for­ward to launch­ing our re­designed web­site in 2025,” said Crooks.

“In vi­su­al­is­ing the fu­ture we want­ed to cre­ate, no one could have an­tic­i­pat­ed the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. We look back on that un­cer­tain time and the path the bank took in ex­em­pli­fy­ing our com­mit­ment to main­tain­ing fi­nan­cial sta­bil­i­ty while sup­port­ing eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery,” she said.

“We re­fer to our­selves as the CBTT fam­i­ly, which took on an even greater mean­ing as we nav­i­gat­ed the pan­dem­ic. But as Win­ston Churchill said nev­er waste a good cri­sis and to­day we are an im­proved ver­sion of our­selves be­cause we ap­plied the lessons learned,” Crooks said.

She ex­plained in the fea­ture that bank has al­so tak­en steps to mea­sure and re­duce its car­bon foot­print through the im­ple­men­ta­tion of re­cy­cling and en­er­gy con­ser­va­tion mea­sures.

Part of the bank’s an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion al­so in­volved the plant­i­ng of 60 trees each in T&T. The bank al­so adopt­ed new work en­vi­ron­ment prac­tices af­ter do­ing an in­ter­nal staff as­sess­ment.

She said, “In­ter­nal im­prove­ments have been sub­stan­tial with a com­pre­hen­sive staff sur­vey in 2022 fol­lowed by the de­vel­op­ment and im­ple­men­ta­tion of an ac­tion plan to ad­dress op­por­tu­ni­ties iden­ti­fied for im­prove­ment plan ex­e­cu­tion is mon­i­tored by a cross-func­tion­al team of staff mem­bers known as the SAAF sur­vey track team who work close­ly with man­age­ment to in­flu­ence pos­i­tive change out of this plan the bank has suc­cess­ful­ly adapt­ed to new work­ing mod­els in­clud­ing hy­brid work. “

She said this has led to staff tak­ing part in the “I am a cen­tral banker” pro­gramme which she ex­plained had strength­ened man­age­ment-em­ploy­ee re­la­tions through in­ten­tion­al team-build­ing en­gage­ments.