Chair­man of Bar­ba­dos-based, CIBC First­Caribbean, Trinida­di­an Michael Man­soor views the T&T econ­o­my as be­ing in a "very priv­i­leged po­si­tion," com­pared with some of its neigh­bours to the north. Speak­ing with the Busi­ness Guardian at its Long Cir­cu­lar Road, Mar­aval branch dur­ing last week Wednes­day's of­fi­cial launch of the bank's wealth man­age­ment cen­tre, Man­soor said: "We have an oil and gas econ­o­my, a petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor, that pro­vides us with a very steady flow of for­eign ex­change that un­der­pins many of the oth­er man­i­fes­ta­tions of af­flu­ence. It pro­vides T&T with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to have the seed fund­ing for in­fra­struc­tur­al in­vest­ments in roads, air­ports and oth­er things. "Ab­sent an in­dus­try such as oil and gas-or in the case of Pana­ma, a canal that pro­duces for­eign ex­change 24 hours a day-coun­tries find them­selves look­ing for tourists, for­eign in­vest­ment or de­vel­op­ing a de­pen­den­cy on re­mit­tances to pro­vide the funds to ac­quire goods on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket." Man­soor is con­sid­ered an in­tel­lec­tu­al heavy­weight and his views on the lo­cal econ­o­my, which he said were per­son­al, are in­formed by his cur­rent po­si­tion as the chair­man of the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean's largest bank, his train­ing as a char­tered ac­coun­tant, his role as an in­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor from 1987 to 1995 and his pre­vi­ous in­car­na­tion as a se­nior ex­ec­u­tive in the ANSA McAL group.

In or­der to main­tain this po­si­tion of eco­nom­ic priv­i­lege, Man­soor said that T&T has to earn it, not on­ly in 2012 but in 2022 and 2032. And he said that if by any chance the mod­el up­on which the T&T econ­o­my has been suc­cess­ful­ly based changes, be­cause of shifts in world de­mand or sup­ply, the coun­try must be flex­i­ble enough to ad­just to those changes. But he de­scribes T&T as a "lone star in a rel­a­tive­ly dark­er sky in terms of its abil­i­ty to meet the ex­i­gen­cies of to­day's econ­o­my." Giv­en the strength of the T&T econ­o­my and the sound­ness of its par­ent com­pa­ny, the Cana­di­an gi­ant, CIBC, Man­soor says CIBC First­Caribbean is "very, very op­ti­mistic about the abil­i­ty to build our fran­chise in this mar­ket. We be­lieve we will do well by our cus­tomers and do well by the in­ter­est of our share­hold­ers." In the con­text of Man­soor's de­scrip­tion of the T&T econ­o­my, it is not sur­pris­ing that CIBC First­Caribbean's ex­pan­sion in T&T has come in the area of wealth man­age­ment. Defin­ing wealth man­age­ment, Man­soor said it tar­gets the high-end re­tail cus­tomers whose bank­ing needs go be­yond hav­ing a trans­ac­tion ac­count. "It is re­al­ly look­ing af­ter cus­tomers who are think­ing about their pen­sions or in­vest­ment pos­si­bil­i­ties or how they man­age their fi­nan­cial as­sets." Man­soor said that while sev­er­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions have es­tab­lished thresh­olds be­low which they will not con­sid­er cus­tomers, that is not the case with CIBC First­Caribbean.

"We have not set a hard thresh­old but clear­ly the no­tion of wealth man­age­ment as­sumes that there is wealth. The re­al thresh­old for us is some­one who is a bona fide client of the bank and, very im­por­tant­ly, some­one who we think is, or will, have as­sets to be man­aged in one way or the oth­er." Asked to out­line the ser­vices that will be of­fered by the wealth man­age­ment di­vi­sion, Man­soor said that in ad­di­tion to the trans­ac­tion­al ser­vices such as deb­it and cred­it cards, "the nub of the mat­ter is to as­sist our clients in plac­ing their funds in the safest and most lu­cra­tive" in­vest­ments. This in­volves un­der­stand­ing the needs of the client and pro­vid­ing them with the ad­vice nec­es­sary to achieve the goals and ob­jec­tives out­lined by them. Most banks in T&T at­tempt to dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween cus­tomers whose needs are most­ly trans­ac­tion­al and those whose needs go be­yond trans­ac­tions to in­vest­ments and the long-term man­age­ment of funds. Man­soor de­scribed CIBC First­Caribbean's re­cent fi­nan­cial per­for­mance as "mod­est" and "chal­leng­ing," adding quick­ly that "banks are a re­flec­tion of the so­ci­eties in which they op­er­ate." The bank's re­sults have been af­fect­ed by the fact that a "large per­cent­age" of its busi­ness is con­duct­ed in economies with a heavy de­pen­dence on tourism "and it's any­body's guess where we are in the busi­ness cy­cle."

The fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion's net in­come for the fi­nan­cial year end­ing Oc­to­ber 31, 2011 was US$73.6 mil­lion, a de­cline of 56.6 per cent from the US$157.4 mil­lion that it earned for the 2010 fi­nan­cial year. The high­lights of the bank's 2011 fi­nan­cial year al­so in­clude the fact that its net in­ter­est in­come de­clined by 6 per cent to US$374.1 mil­lion, while its op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es in­creased by 6.6 per cent to US$338.4 mil­lion. In his chair­man's re­port, Man­soor said the com­pa­ny's per­for­mance in 2011 was "pri­mar­i­ly dri­ven by high­er op­er­at­ing and loan loss ex­pens­es and de­clines in net in­ter­est in­come" but that the re­sults "should be con­sid­ered in the con­text of a set of very dif­fi­cult con­di­tions be­ing faced by re­gion­al economies whose pri­ma­ry busi­ness is tourism and in­ter­na­tion­al wealth man­age­ment ac­tiv­i­ties, both of which have suf­fered con­sid­er­ably in the pre­vail­ing glob­al cli­mate." For its most re­cent quar­ter, which end­ed Jan­u­ary 31, 2012, the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion's net in­come de­clined by 24.2 per cent to US$21.1 mil­lion. Man­soor said while he would not get in­to the busi­ness of at­tempt­ing to pre­dict the end of the busi­ness cy­cle, he is very con­fi­dent about the sound­ness of CIBC, the Cana­di­an par­ent com­pa­ny of CIBC First­Caribbean, and its po­si­tion as one of the best cap­i­tal­ized banks in the world, which was af­firmed by a Bloomberg sur­vey on May 2 that named CIBC as the third strongest bank in the world. CIBC owns 92 per cent of CIBC First­Caribbean's shares and the Bar­ba­dos-based bank's cap­i­tal ra­tios re­main strong with Tier I cap­i­tal at 21 per cent and with com­bined Tier I and II ra­tios of 22 per cent.

Be­spoke ser­vice

In his ad­dress at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny the CEO of CIBC First­Caribbean, Rik Parkhill re­in­forced the Bank's com­mit­ment to cus­tomer ser­vice and cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty when he as­sured clients "one com­mit­ment that we can give to you this evening, is that we will con­tin­ue to in­vest in the de­vel­op­ment of our peo­ple, tech­nol­o­gy and prod­ucts." Speak­ing with the Busi­ness Guardian, Parkhill said what the bank will pro­vide to its wealth man­age­ment clients would not be "a cook­ie-cut­ter so­lu­tion to bank­ing or a check-the-box ap­proach." He said CIBC First­Caribbean in­tends to in­tro­duce a be­spoke ap­proach to bank­ing in which the ser­vice will be cus­tomised to what the client wants. He said the Mar­aval of­fice would be the first of a num­ber of wealth man­age­ment cen­tres that CIBC First­Caribbean in­tends to in­tro­duce through­out T&T. He said the bank has two oth­er lo­ca­tions in mind. He said the bank was pay­ing more at­ten­tion to the T&T mar­ket by adding wealth man­age­ment to the ex­ist­ing ser­vices of cor­po­rate and in­vest­ment bank­ing.

About CIBC First­Caribbean

It is the largest, re­gion­al­ly-list­ed bank in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean, with as­sets of over US$11.2 bil­lion and mar­ket cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion of US$2.5 bil­lion. The Bank has over 3,400 staff; 66 branch­es, 22 bank­ing cen­tres, and sev­en of­fices in 17 re­gion­al mar­kets, serv­ing 550,000 ac­tive ac­counts. The Bank was formed in 2002 with the merg­er of CIBC West In­dies Hold­ings and Bar­clays Bank PLC Caribbean op­er­a­tions un­der the name First­Caribbean.