SASCHA WIL­SON

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning says T&T has the po­ten­tial to be­come the hemi­spher­ic hub of tech­nol­o­gy ser­vices.

Man­ning was speak­ing at the of­fi­cial launch of ANSA Bank’s Dig­i­tal Touch­point and Dig­i­tal Fi­nan­cial Space ini­tia­tive at Gulf City Mall in La Ro­main yes­ter­day.

“Tech­nol­o­gy and dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion are the fu­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go. May I say one day, and hope­ful­ly soon, Trinidad and To­ba­go will be­come the hemi­spher­ic hub for tech­nol­o­gy ser­vices. We have the re­sources, we have the peo­ple, we have the in­fra­struc­ture. Let’s get it done to­geth­er,” Man­ning said.

Not­ing that re­con­sid­er­ing how bank­ing is done lo­cal­ly is a chal­lenge for all lead­ers with­in the fi­nan­cial ser­vices cen­tre, he com­mend­ed ANSA Bank’s thrust in mod­ernising its bank­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

ANSA Bank is whol­ly owned by ANSA Mer­chant Bank, which is a mem­ber of the ANSA McAL Group of Com­pa­nies. Man­ning point­ed out that da­ta show that the lo­cal ap­petite for tech­nol­o­gy and mo­bile com­mu­ni­ca­tion cor­re­sponds favourably with Gov­ern­ment’s na­tion­al thrust for dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion and fin­tech adop­tion.

“In fact, as of Jan­u­ary 2021, there were an es­ti­mat­ed 940,000 ac­tive so­cial me­dia ac­counts, and al­most 84 per cent of our coun­try’s pop­u­la­tion ac­tive­ly utilised in­ter­net ser­vices. The sta­tis­tics for mo­bile con­nec­tions, quot­ed at 1.9 mil­lion, are even more re­mark­able. T&T’s telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­fra­struc­ture is ex­treme­ly ad­vanced in con­trast to the oth­er na­tions of Latin Amer­i­ca. Glob­al trends al­so show that the fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor is mov­ing to­wards dig­i­tal bank­ing to re­duce ex­pens­es, en­hance cus­tomer ser­vice, and in­crease ef­fi­cien­cy. Banks are in­vest­ing heav­i­ly in tech­nol­o­gy,” ex­plained Man­ning.

He said fos­ter­ing an in­clu­sive dig­i­tal fi­nan­cial econ­o­my in the coun­try is para­mount to im­prov­ing se­cu­ri­ty, pur­chas­ing pow­er, rev­enue gen­er­a­tion, and ac­cess to key cred­it fa­cil­i­ties for all peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly the un­der­banked and vul­ner­a­ble groups that ac­count for 20 per cent of the adult pop­u­la­tion.

“To re­think bank­ing is a clar­i­on call for us as lead­ers with­in the fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor to put fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion in­to fo­cus to en­sure all cit­i­zens have ac­cess to the tools and re­sources they need to se­cure their eco­nom­ic well-be­ing.” Man­ning said the Min­istry of Fi­nance, in the com­ing months, will es­tab­lish a Fin­Tech In­no­va­tion Hub through the State-owned Trinidad and To­ba­go In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre, to ad­dress fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion and pro­mote ad­di­tion­al in­no­va­tion with­in the lo­cal Fin­Tech sec­tor.

In her re­marks, ANSA Bank’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Kath­leen Galy, said, “Fol­low­ing on the launch of the ANSA Bank’s state-of-the-art con­tact cen­tre in De­cem­ber 2022, to­day, we open our first, new dig­i­tal­ly en­abled branch, which em­braces our be­lief that the fu­ture of last­ing cus­tomer re­la­tion­ships must go hand-in-hand with dig­i­tal prowess.

Galy added, “This open­ing is the sec­ond re­lease of sev­er­al dig­i­tal touch­points in our om­ni-chan­nel ex­pe­ri­ence. The same ad­van­tage to be free to cre­ate any­thing with­out lega­cy con­straints, presents an equal-sized dis­ad­van­tage… that is, the time it takes to build the foun­da­tion to en­sure we get it right.”

ANSA Bank chair­man, David Du­lal-White­way, said the group chose a new bank­ing mod­el for the bank based on a dig­i­tal-first strat­e­gy, cre­at­ing av­enues for cus­tomers to ac­cess their fi­nan­cial as­sets and sav­ings, safe­ly and eas­i­ly.”

Ac­knowl­edg­ing that bank­ing has be­come com­pli­cat­ed over the years, he said it is not easy for cus­tomers to do busi­ness with banks.

“Just think of how dif­fi­cult it is to open a new bank ac­count! It is ANSA Bank’s in­ten­tion to cre­ate break­throughs in the crit­i­cal cus­tomer fac­ing process­es. We will be easy to do busi­ness with as we re­move all un­nec­es­sary bu­reau­crat­ic hur­dles faced by our cus­tomers. In ad­di­tion, they will find well-trained, em­pow­ered staff, all geared to­wards sat­is­fy­ing the needs of the pub­lic.”

He added that it is ANSA Bank’s in­ten­tion to rein­vent every as­pect of bank­ing.