Gail Alexan­der

Drop your fees, please.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert says he’ll ask banks if they can “re­lax” their stan­dard fees for peo­ple do­ing the $100 poly­mer note changeover.

Im­bert con­firmed this at yes­ter­day’s post-cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing where he and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young spoke about is­sues stem­ming from the changeover from the pa­per-based $100 note to new poly­mer ones. The dead­line for sub­mis­sion of “old” notes is De­cem­ber 31. At mid­night on that date, the notes will no longer be le­gal ten­der.

The changeover’s de­signed to sup­port Gov­ern­ment’s an­ti-crime thrust and flush out cul­prits with coun­ter­feit mon­ey, ill-got­ten gains and gang­land fund­ing.

Im­bert said “It’s a work in progress. We’re in lis­ten­ing mode to hear what peo­ple are say­ing and how they can be ac­com­mo­dat­ed,” he said.

On con­cerns that banks were “charg­ing mon­ey” for changeover pro­ce­dures, he said there are stan­dard bank fees for de­posits and with­drawals, “Some banks charge, oth­ers don’t.”

“I’m told by the Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion that fees they’re charg­ing are stan­dard fees for the same type of trans­ac­tion. If any­one has in­for­ma­tion this isn’t true and banks are do­ing things they shouldn’t be, bring specifics to our at­ten­tion.”

“We at Fi­nance will do what we can to deal with any prob­lems or in­con­ve­niences peo­ple ex­pe­ri­ence. If it’s a par­tic­u­lar bank or branch that’s in­con­ve­nienc­ing peo­ple - we just need to get the in­for­ma­tion,” he said.

Since cit­i­zens didn’t have a choice in the changeover, Im­bert was asked if peo­ple should be sub­ject to the bank fees.

He replied, “I’ll raise it with the banks, on if they can re­lax fees. I’ve found them to be very ac­com­mo­dat­ing. There are some things they said they just can’t do. But I’ll cer­tain­ly speak to them on whether they can re­lax their fees at this point in time. I’ll ask them but we can’t com­pel them. Each bank has its own pro­ce­dure but I’ll cer­tain­ly ask them, to see whether in this pe­ri­od they can re­lax their usu­al fees and charges,” he said.

Im­bert said he “ sus­pect­ed” that with­in the next three or four days most of the ATMs in T&T will be able to dis­pense poly­mer notes:

“As of Wednes­day FCB was al­ready dis­pens­ing poly­mer notes through some ATMs. Re­pub­lic Bank is re­port­ing more than half their ATMs are al­so dis­pens­ing. I ex­pect RBC to fol­low suit. They all use the same type of ma­chine,” he said.

“How­ev­er Sco­tia­bank needs a lit­tle more time since it us­es im­age recog­ni­tion sys­tems and hasn’t stat­ed when it will be dis­pens­ing new notes, he said.

Im­bert said Sco­tia had es­ti­mat­ed it would take one to three months to mod­i­fy sys­tems, “ But so did oth­er banks and sur­pris­ing­ly and for­tu­nate­ly they got it sort­ed in two days. We’re hope­ful if RBC and Re­pub­lic can do that, I see no rea­son why Sco­tia­bank can’t.”

“I’m pleas­ant­ly sur­prised banks were able to change the ini­tal­ly es­ti­mat­ed three month pe­ri­od to retro­fit ATMs to two days—that’s a re­al pos­i­tive for us . Ini­tial­ly at our first meet­ing last Fri­day, banks said the ini­tial re­sponse from the sup­pli­ers of their ATM ma­chines , was that it’d take some time to mod­i­fy ATMs to re­ceive and dis­pense new notes. They ini­tial­ly said two to three months. Very for­tu­nate­ly that ini­tial es­ti­mate turned out to be a bit of an ex­ag­ger­a­tion,” he added.

Talks al­so con­tin­ue with bankers and Cen­tral Bank on op­tions to as­sist busi­ness­peo­ple who have large quan­ti­ties of “old” notes af­ter Christ­mas sales. Im­bert said it was a very flu­id sit­u­a­tion on what will hap­pen af­ter Christ­mas Day.

He said banks have agreed to re­main open be­yond nor­mal hours on Old year’s Day, Christ­mas Eve and up­com­ing Sat­ur­days.

On peo­ple’s re­fusal to ac­cept “old” notes, Im­bert said le­gal re­search is still be­ing done, but so far it’s viewed as a pri­vate trans­ac­tion and was dif­fi­cult to com­pel some­one to ac­cept notes, “But we’re still look­ing as a dis­crim­i­na­tion ar­gu­ment has been raised,” he said adding the SDMS’ pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter on the is­sue con­cerns prop­er­ty, rather than dis­crim­i­na­tion.