ANSA Bank Ltd, for­mer­ly called Bank of Bar­o­da T&T (Ltd), record­ed a loss of $1.5 mil­lion for the year end­ed March 31, 2021.

For the same pe­ri­od in 2020, the bank record­ed a prof­it of $872,000.

Bank of Bar­o­da (T&T) was in­cor­po­rat­ed in this coun­try on March 13, 2006.

It com­menced op­er­a­tions on Oc­to­ber 17, 2007.

On Feb­ru­ary 26 this year, the Bank of Bar­o­da (T&T) was ac­quired by ANSA Mer­chant Bank Ltd.

And on March 24 its name was of­fi­cial­ly changed to ANSA Bank.

“In De­cem­ber 2019, ANSA Mer­chant Bank signed an agree­ment to pur­chase the shares of Bank of Bar­o­da (Trinidad) Ltd (BOBTL). This trans­ac­tion was fi­nalised—with the op­er­a­tions segue­ing to ANSA Bank Ltd—some 15 months lat­er on Feb­ru­ary 26. It is im­por­tant to note, there­fore, that al­though the fi­nan­cial state­ments are in the name of ANSA Bank Ltd, the re­sults for the year end­ed March 31, 2021 rep­re­sent eleven months op­er­a­tions un­der the pre­vi­ous man­age­ment of Bank of Bar­o­da (Trinidad),” a re­lease stat­ed yes­ter­day.

“Dur­ing the pe­ri­od un­der re­view, BOBTL cur­tailed its op­er­a­tions sig­nif­i­cant­ly in keep­ing with its fo­cus to ex­it the mar­ket via the sale of its lo­cal op­er­a­tions. This is re­flect­ed in the re­cent­ly pub­lished year-end re­sults,” it stat­ed.

Ref­er­enc­ing the re­sults, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Robert Le Hunte said that they are un­der­stand­able giv­en that they rep­re­sent the wind­ing down of BOBTL’s op­er­a­tions over the last cou­ple of years.

“In ad­di­tion, 2020, un­der pan­dem­ic con­di­tions, was a chal­leng­ing one for most fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions. It would have been even more dif­fi­cult for BOBTL as their lega­cy sys­tems did not give them the agili­ty to switch cus­tomers to dig­i­tal trans­ac­tions,” it stat­ed.

“We have gained tremen­dous trac­tion and sup­port from the mar­ket since tak­ing over the in­sti­tu­tion,” Le Hunte said.

“We are con­fi­dent about the busi­ness mod­el that we are pur­su­ing, which is based on lever­ag­ing tech­nol­o­gy and a cus­tomer-cen­tric dig­i­tal ap­proach. We are con­fi­dent this strat­e­gy will de­light and re­ward our cus­tomers in the long run and will com­fort­ably meet our an­tic­i­pat­ed fi­nan­cial tar­gets,” he said.