Sean Nero

Lo­cal banks con­tin­ue to wres­tle with ex­cess liq­uid­i­ty and the over­all slow­down in bor­row­ing by the busi­ness sec­tor even with in­ter­est rates at all-time lows, says Nigel Bap­tiste, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor at Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed.

Speak­ing at the 2016 Grad­u­a­tion Cer­e­mo­ny of the In­sti­tute of Bank­ing and Fi­nance of T&T at the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce in West­moor­ings, he said: "We grap­ple with a chang­ing cus­tomer de­mo­graph­ic, high staff turnover across the in­dus­try and greater op­por­tu­ni­ties for fraud and mon­ey laun­der­ing from an in­creas­ing­ly in­ter­con­nect­ed world. Why am I telling you all of this?

"The qual­i­fi­ca­tions in bank­ing and fi­nance you are ob­tain­ing will cer­tain­ly not make you an in­stant ex­pert to tack­le chal­lenges in the fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor. The qual­i­fi­ca­tions in bank­ing and fi­nance you are ob­tain­ing to­day give you a unique op­por­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther prove your­self with­in what­ev­er or­gan­i­sa­tion or team to which your be­long.

"These qual­i­fi­ca­tions mean that you are bet­ter equipped to play your part of an over­all team. These qual­i­fi­ca­tions mean that you are well on your way."Bap­tiste told grad­u­ates of the pro­gramme while hard work and de­ter­mi­na­tion might get them to the top, in­tegri­ty would keep them there.

"Nev­er com­pro­mise your per­son­al in­tegri­ty to make a dol­lar, or even a bil­lion. The world's news al­ways seems to be filled with an­oth­er sto­ry of a banker of a fi­nan­cial or­gan­i­sa­tion that sought to cut cor­ners and act dis­hon­est­ly.

"I don't have to tell you how much of so­ci­ety is keyed-in to our sec­tor but I do want to tell you that with every ac­com­plish­ment you at­tain, you are do­ing your part in telling the sto­ry that bankers are not dis­hon­est," Bap­tiste said.

He said T&T had nu­mer­ous vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties in its fi­nan­cial sys­tem, in­clud­ing a heavy de­pen­dence on the en­er­gy sec­tor, high lev­el of house­hold in­debt­ed­ness and his­tor­i­cal­ly low do­mes­tic in­ter­est rates.

"In any bank, any or­gan­i­sa­tion, there are al­ways those who are sole­ly fo­cused on the short-term gain–the biggest bonus and the flashy ex­cit­ing job ti­tle–which may be fine but as you con­tin­ue to nav­i­gate the ups and down of your ca­reer paths in pur­suit of long-term goals, the hard truth re­mains you have to con­tin­ue to work hard so you can con­tin­ue to stand out.

"And, you need to be pa­tient and wait for the op­por­tu­ni­ties to arise. Hard work and pa­tience paved the road for my boss­es to first no­tice and then, sub­se­quent­ly, be­lieve in me. Over time, as all the things I had learned pre­vi­ous­ly in class came in­to play, I con­tin­ued learn­ing and work­ing hard at my job. And that in­clud­ed as­pects that I had nev­er thought of be­fore; things like learn­ing how to be ab­solute­ly com­fort­able man­ag­ing peo­ple, who were old­er than I am."

Bap­tiste said he had learned that the best ideas nev­er came from op­er­at­ing alone in a si­lo or from the man­age­ment team op­er­at­ing alone but from a team work­ing to­geth­er.

"In short, the more I knew, the more I knew I had to know. Through that think­ing, I learned about in­no­va­tion. I learned how to suc­cess­ful­ly chal­lenge par­a­digms. I learned how to make pre­sen­ta­tions, dri­ve hard ne­go­ti­a­tions and close a deal. I learned how to speak the lan­guage of lead­ers and that lan­guage is sur­pris­ing­ly sim­ple as you your­selves will one day dis­cov­er.

"It doesn't mat­ter in what ca­pac­i­ty you serve, your serve the cus­tomer. They have placed trust in us and we must al­ways do our best to nev­er let them down. They may nev­er stop say­ing that we are 'ol tiefs', but let us con­tin­ue to do our very best, to nev­er give them rea­son to say more, and worse," he said.