CIBC First­Caribbean un­veiled its re­brand­ed re­gion­al bank, CIBC Caribbean, promis­ing it is not just a “cos­met­ic change but a strate­gic move to po­si­tion our­selves as a mod­ern, for­ward-think­ing in­sti­tu­tion.”

Speak­ing dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ny at the bank’s Bar­ba­dos-based head of­fice, CEO Mark St Hill said the de­ci­sion to re­brand “re­flects our ded­i­ca­tion to adapt and evolve with the needs of our clients and the dy­nam­ic land­scape of the fi­nan­cial in­dus­try”.

“In an era of rapid tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ments and chang­ing cus­tomer ex­pec­ta­tions, re­brand­ing is not just a cos­met­ic change but a strate­gic move to po­si­tion our­selves as a mod­ern, for­ward-think­ing in­sti­tu­tion,” the bank said in a news re­lease yes­ter­day.

St Hill told the au­di­ence that the bank is on the cusp of “a new era of growth, in­no­va­tion, and ser­vice ex­cel­lence through our re­brand­ing ini­tia­tive.” The au­di­ence in­clud­ed Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley, CIBC pres­i­dent and CEO, Vic­tor Dodig, mem­bers of the diplo­mat­ic corps and scores of ex­cit­ed bank staff,

“Our new brand iden­ti­ty is a tes­ta­ment to our her­itage, sym­bol­is­ing the val­ues that have been the cor­ner­stone of our suc­cess for the past 100 years. At the same time, it em­braces a fresh, con­tem­po­rary look that sig­ni­fies our readi­ness to em­brace the fu­ture. We want our clients to feel a re­newed sense of con­fi­dence in our abil­i­ty to meet their fi­nan­cial needs, cou­pled with the as­sur­ance that we re­main root­ed in the prin­ci­ples that have guid­ed us since our in­cep­tion,” St Hill said.

Mot­t­ley, the fea­tured speak­er at the event, thanked Dodig for “hav­ing the con­fi­dence in this coun­try to recom­mit in this way (for us) to be a se­ri­ous part of the glob­al brand of CIBC. It was so easy for you to choose any­where else, but you chose Bar­ba­dos, and you chose to recom­mit af­ter some dif­fi­cult years and that has not es­caped us as gov­ern­ment or a coun­try. I’m sure it has not es­caped your em­ploy­ees as well.

“I be­lieve that your com­mit­ment to the coun­try was re­flect­ed not just this year with the re­brand­ing, but when your bank took the de­ci­sion to come back in­to the do­mes­tic mar­ket and to pur­chase $100 mil­lion in BOSS bonds…that was a huge step of con­fi­dence,” Prime Min­is­ter Mot­t­ley said. She al­so praised the bank for think­ing “out­side the box” and be­ing “in­no­v­a­tive” as lead arranger and lender for the Bar­ba­dos Blue Bond.

The re­brand­ing event com­menced with a flag-rais­ing cer­e­mo­ny con­duct­ed by mem­bers of the Bar­ba­dos Cadet Corps whose smart­ly at­tired cadets un­furled 10 na­tion­al flags which flut­tered proud­ly in the evening breeze, rep­re­sent­ing the ter­ri­to­ries where the bank is lo­cat­ed as well as that of par­ent com­pa­ny Cana­da, and the cor­po­rate flag.

The Prime Min­is­ter along with ex­ec­u­tives and staff mem­bers al­so placed items rep­re­sent­ing the bank’s mile­stones over the years as well as a let­ter from the youngest mem­ber of staff, in­to a time cap­sule to be opened in 50 years.

CIBC Caribbean is lo­cat­ed in 12 coun­tries around the Caribbean, pro­vid­ing the bank­ing ser­vices through ap­prox­i­mate­ly 2,700 em­ploy­ees in 45 branch­es and of­fices. The bank has US$13 bil­lion in as­sets and mar­ket cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion of US$1 bil­lion.