First­Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al Bank Ltd has an­nounced that its whol­ly-owned sub­sidiary, First­Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al Bank (Cay­man) Ltd (FCIB Cay­man), has agreed to sell its bank­ing as­sets in Cu­raçao and St Maarten to the Cu­raçao-based Or­co Bank.

Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment is­sued from CIBC, Or­co Bank, es­tab­lished in 1986 in Cu­raçao and is ded­i­cat­ed to serv­ing the com­mu­ni­ties of Cu­raçao, Bonaire, and St Maarten by pro­vid­ing a com­pre­hen­sive range of per­son­al and busi­ness bank­ing so­lu­tions.

Orig­i­nal­ly fo­cused on off­shore ac­tiv­i­ties, bond trad­ing, and in­vest­ment bank­ing, the bank has now broad­ened its scope to de­liv­er bank­ing prod­ucts and ser­vices to in­di­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es in the re­gion.

The state­ment al­so not­ed that the trans­ac­tions are sub­ject to reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval, in­clud­ing from the Cay­man Is­lands Mon­e­tary Agency, the Cen­tral Bank of Bar­ba­dos, and the Cen­tral Bank of Cu­raçao and St Maarten, and are ex­pect­ed to be fi­nalised in the com­ing months.

It fur­ther not­ed that Or­co Bank of­fers an ex­ten­sive range of bank­ing so­lu­tions de­signed to meet the unique needs of per­son­al cus­tomers.

“These in­clude a va­ri­ety of ac­count op­tions such as cur­rent ac­counts and sav­ings ac­counts, as well as cred­it and deb­it card choic­es. The bank al­so pro­vides flex­i­ble fi­nanc­ing op­tions with mort­gages, per­son­al loans, and car loans, along with in­sur­ance bro­ker­age ser­vices,” the state­ment not­ed.

In an­nounc­ing that Or­co and CIBC First­Caribbean had reached agree­ment on the terms of the trans­ac­tion, CIBC First­Caribbean’s CEO, Mark St Hill, not­ed that: “These trans­ac­tions are the fi­nal ones in our pro­gramme of coun­try di­vesti­tures that be­gan in 2021 with the sale of our as­sets in Aru­ba and some of our OECS ter­ri­to­ries. This pro­gramme be­gan as part of our strat­e­gy to en­able CIBC First­Caribbean to op­ti­mise and sim­pli­fy its busi­ness, fur­ther en­hance ef­fi­cien­cy and fo­cus on core mar­kets to ac­cel­er­ate growth. When these di­vesti­tures are com­plet­ed, it will al­low our bank to turn its full at­ten­tion to grow­ing our busi­ness, con­sol­i­dat­ing our po­si­tion in our core mar­kets and op­ti­mis­ing our strat­e­gy of pro­vid­ing a sec­ond-to-none om­ni-chan­nel bank­ing ser­vice to our clients.”

St Hill added that a de­ci­sion to leave a mar­ket is nev­er an easy one.

In Oc­to­ber 2021, CIBC First­Caribbean an­nounced its in­ten­tion to sell its op­er­a­tions in St Vin­cent, Grena­da, St Kitts and Nevis, and Do­mini­ca to a con­sor­tium of banks. It al­so said then that it would sell its op­er­a­tion in Aru­ba.

CIBC First­Caribbean closed its busi­ness in Do­mini­ca and an­nounced ear­li­er this year that it would not sell its busi­ness in St Kitts and Nevis.

... re­brand­ing to CIBC

As it en­ters a new fi­nan­cial year, First­Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al Bank Ltd has an­nounced that it is re­brand­ing its busi­ness to adopt the name of its par­ent, CIBC.

CEO of the bank, Mark St Hill, made the an­nounce­ment to his staff yes­ter­day.

In a state­ment, St Hill not­ed that the adop­tion of the CIBC brand is a show of con­fi­dence of the bank’s par­ent bank, and a sign of its com­mit­ment to the Caribbean re­gion.

In ad­dress­ing his team he said, “We’ve been on an awe­some jour­ney to trans­form our busi­ness over the past three years. We’ve achieved some re­mark­able things to­geth­er. We cre­at­ed the type of om­ni-chan­nel bank­ing ex­pe­ri­ence that al­lows our clients to bank with us us­ing our award-win­ning dig­i­tal ser­vices when­ev­er they want to and come in­to the bank­ing hall when they need to.

St Hill al­so not­ed that the re­gion­al bank has al­ways had the dis­tinct ad­van­tage of be­ing a part of a wide­ly re­spect­ed and recog­nised glob­al brand and added that now car­ry­ing the CIBC name will ben­e­fit CIBC First­Caribbean even more, as the bank con­tin­ues down a path of growth in the Caribbean.

He added: “We will have the strength of this glob­al pow­er­house be­hind us, while main­tain­ing the Caribbean flavour and knowl­edge of the mar­ket­place that we have be­come known for. So, we will ho­n­our the past—recog­nis­ing where we have come from—while look­ing ex­cit­ed­ly to the fu­ture.”

The CEO as­sured his em­ploy­ees that the spec­u­la­tion about the bank’s fu­ture in the re­gion will be put to bed with this show of com­mit­ment from the par­ent bank.

CIBC, a Cana­di­an bank, owns 91.67 per cent of First­Caribbean.