Ky­ron Reg­is

ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed (RBL) has an­nounced that it will be low­er­ing the in­ter­est rates on loans and giv­ing par­ties the op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­fer loan pay­ments.

Speak­ing on these mea­sures re­cent­ly on CNC3, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of RBL Nigel Bap­tiste said that the de­ci­sions made by the bank would as­sist with the liq­uid­i­ty re­quire­ments of com­pa­nies.

Bap­tiste ar­tic­u­lat­ed: “The Prime Min­is­ter men­tioned the de­fer­ral of loan pay­ments. This is not a waiv­ing of the loan pay­ment, this is not a write off of the loan pay­ment - this is a de­fer­ral of the loan pay­ment.”

He con­tin­ued: “Again it is in­tend­ing to as­sist in the cash flow of the com­pa­ny. Not for the com­pa­ny to take and use oth­er­wise but for the com­pa­ny to use that cash flow very wise­ly to see it through this cri­sis.”

Al­so im­ple­ment­ing a de­fer­ral pol­i­cy was Term Fi­nance, which an­nounced that it would of­fer de­fer­rals on em­ploy­ee loan pay­ments.

In a re­lease, Term Fi­nance in­di­cat­ed that it would on­ly grant de­fer­rals in cas­es where em­ploy­ers con­firm that wages are be­ing ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed.

Term Fi­nance that it had has reached out to their Cor­po­rate Part­ners across the re­gion to im­ple­ment these strate­gies.

Term Fi­nance CEO, Oliv­er Sab­ga said: “We have strong part­ner­ships with the most rep­utable or­ga­ni­za­tions across the re­gion, this de­ci­sion is in line with our com­mit­ment to treat em­ploy­ees with the high­est lev­el of com­pas­sion and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly in times like these.”

Term Fi­nance added that it would be­gin to re­ori­ent some of its loan of­fi­cers to fi­nan­cial well be­ing ad­vi­sors.

Be­ing a com­plete­ly web-based lend­ing in­sti­tu­tion, Term Fi­nance said it re­mains open and ready to serve ex­ist­ing and new cus­tomers with their cred­it needs.

Mean­while, Bap­tiste re­marked that he couldn’t speak on be­half of oth­er banks but there are a num­ber of mea­sures that RBL has been dis­cussing and pre­pared to do - such as the re­duc­tion of in­ter­est rates that are linked to the bank’s prime lend­ing rates.

Bap­tiste com­ment­ed that there are mul­ti­ple things to look at as a coun­try, in­di­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es to en­sure that every­one is able to make it to the oth­er side of this cri­sis.

He not­ed that this in­cludes “pro­tect­ing our­selves” where; busi­ness­es are pro­tect­ing em­ploy­ees and the coun­try pro­tect­ing cit­i­zens. It al­so in­cludes pre­serv­ing the cash flow of op­er­a­tions, in­di­vid­u­als and the coun­try. The third prin­ci­ple, ac­cord­ing to Bap­tiste, is pro­tect­ing the sup­ply chain, which in­volves ac­cess to ba­sic goods for in­di­vid­u­als and ac­cess to in­puts for busi­ness­es.

The RBL MD said that as a so­ci­ety peo­ple need to stay close (not phys­i­cal­ly) to oth­ers to un­der­stand the needs of the in­di­vid­u­als and added that per­sons can­not with­draw from their so­ci­etal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to Bap­tiste, the dis­cus­sions be­tween the fi­nance sub-com­mit­tee that the Prime Min­is­ter in­tro­duced and es­tab­lished in con­junc­tion with the bank­ing sec­tor has com­menced and stake­hold­ers have had very healthy ex­changes thus far.

Bap­tiste said the ques­tion of if the bank­ing sec­tor has a heart, may be chal­lenged based on the de­ci­sions of the bank­ing in­sti­tu­tions in the midst of the cur­rent cri­sis.

He said: “As far as I am con­cerned, all of the bankers have al­ways had hearts and this will be an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty for the bank­ing sec­tor to show to the wider com­mu­ni­ty ex­act­ly how big our heart is.”

Bap­tiste said that the bankers share a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in en­sur­ing that T&T, and not just the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, but all the in­di­vid­u­als in T&T are able to suc­cess­ful­ly come out on the oth­er side of this cri­sis.