ANSA Bank’s new dig­i­tal-first touch­point at Gulf City Mall seam­less­ly ties in with its over­ar­ch­ing con­cept of dig­i­tal bank­ing as it plans to open three more of these fa­cil­i­ties in Trinidad.

The bank is al­so look­ing at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of open­ing such a branch in To­ba­go.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian Kath­leen Galy, the bank’s act­ing man­ag­ing di­rec­tor de­scribed the Gulf City branch as “un­like any oth­er bank” in T&T.

“It’s bright, it’s bold, friend­ly and invit­ing and al­so in keep­ing with our vi­sion to be­come a dig­i­tal-first bank­—de­signed specif­i­cal­ly around mo­ti­vat­ing dig­i­tal adop­tion,” she said.

Ac­cord­ing to Galy, the el­der­ly and those not dig­i­tal­ly in­clined can al­so ac­cess the fa­cil­i­ties at the branch with ease with staff to as­sist.

She not­ed the branch has a mul­ti­tude of in­ter­ac­tive sta­tions and built-in touch screens, show­ing tu­to­ri­als on the use of its fea­tures, shows prod­ucts and ser­vices avail­able in a very user-friend­ly way, while high­light­ing unique sell­ing points for each prod­uct line.

“We in­clud­ed a touch­screen ta­ble with in­ter­ac­tive games in our cof­fee lounge area, for a bit of in­ter­ac­tive fun.

“And then of course the last zone would be our state-of-the-art aug­ment­ed re­al­i­ty wall. Cur­rent­ly pro­grammed to take our cus­tomers through our Nat­ur­al Cap­i­tal Hub which we would have part­nered with ANSA Mer­chant Bank and ANSA Mer­chant Bank Bar­ba­dos on join­ing the Cap­i­tals Coali­tion and the Crop­per foun­da­tion to form an al­liance in 2022,” Galy fur­ther ex­plained.

She al­so not­ed that the break­out of the floor plan was zoned to car­ry clients through var­i­ous arms of the dig­i­tal jour­ney, adding that for those who re­quire tra­di­tion­al bank­ing ser­vices, staff are avail­able to meet those needs.

How does the dig­i­tal-first touch­point at Gulf City Mall tie in with the bank’s over­ar­ch­ing con­cept of dig­i­tal bank­ing?

Ac­cord­ing to Galy, the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s strat­e­gy is to be a dig­i­tal-first bank so cus­tomers would use its dig­i­tal tools first.

This, she ex­plained, re­quired sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ments in bank­ing tech­nol­o­gy to bring mod­ern bank­ing tech­nol­o­gy to T&T.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the heart of the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s in­vest­ment is a sense that, to a large ex­tent, fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy is lack­ing in T&T.

“We would love to see the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem start build­ing out pro­grammes with­in schools to ad­dress this from a much younger age.

“Be­yond en­sur­ing full bank­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ty, the sys­tem is be­ing de­signed to do our part in fill­ing that knowl­edge gap. The plat­form is be­ing de­signed around fi­nan­cial well­ness, with our prod­uct pric­ing and po­si­tion­ing around re­ward­ing good fi­nan­cial habits,” Galy said.

She not­ed ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­grammes would aid lo­cal small busi­ness­es, not just to make them bank­able but rather to po­si­tion them for growth.

Re­gard­ing the chal­lenges fac­ing the lo­cal bank­ing sec­tor gen­er­al­ly, Galy said bank­ing is per­ceived as “a nec­es­sary evil,” which she com­pared to a den­tist ap­point­ment.

For in­stance, she de­tailed long wait times, unan­swered phone calls, and re­quests that re­main unan­swered which are not lim­it­ed to bank­ing alone and which makes it ex­treme­ly frus­trat­ing to trans­act in Trinidad.

“For bank­ing in par­tic­u­lar, when you fac­tor in the vol­ume of reg­u­la­tion and com­pli­ance need­ed it makes it quite dif­fi­cult, and of­ten forms a de­ter­rent to mar­ket agili­ty.

“We need as a sec­tor to con­tin­ue to im­prove on the ease of do­ing busi­ness. We need to dri­ve process im­prove­ment and ef­fi­cien­cy that would en­hance the cus­tomer ser­vice de­liv­ery lev­els need­ed to fos­ter growth and stim­u­la­tion of our econ­o­my,” Galy ad­vised.

She al­so spoke about how her ex­pe­ri­ence has been since be­ing in the Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor’s chair.

“If I have to sum up in one word I would say dy­nam­ic. I have had the ben­e­fit of sev­er­al years of work lead­ing in­to cre­at­ing a road map for the busi­ness, so the fu­ture state is very clear­ly de­fined,” Galy said, adding that aligned to ANSA’s cul­ture to push to ac­com­plish the im­pos­si­ble, and be­ing rest­less with the sta­tus quo.

“We earned this rep­u­ta­tion with ANSA Fi­nance and Mer­chant Bank with our In-One Prod­uct, which be­came ANSA Mer­chant Bank and a leader in cap­i­tal mar­kets and to­day it is ful­ly ev­i­dent in ANSA Bank with our dy­nam­ic of­fer­ings, so we have quite a lot to pro­vide clients,” Galy added.

Al­so, she ex­plained that to go to mar­ket as quick­ly meant that the teams are work­ing con­cur­rent­ly on mul­ti­ple ma­jor IT projects, which Galy said is “un­heard of in the tra­di­tion­al bank­ing in­dus­try.”

“All the while build­ing out the op­er­a­tions, re­design­ing our phys­i­cal touch points and de­vel­op­ing our team and new cul­ture.

“Deep breaths and laser fo­cus, an en­er­gised and com­mit­ted team and an ag­ile mind­set have car­ried us this far and will con­tin­ue to car­ry us while we build out our foun­da­tion. There­after it’s time to have some fun along with our clients, as the next phase in our jour­ney,” Galy not­ed.

Next month makes it two years since ANSA took over the Bank of Bar­o­da.

On what has been the ex­pe­ri­ence so far Galy said it’s akin to build­ing a home.

“You know you dri­ve past an emp­ty lot of land and see mo­bil­i­sa­tion to start build­ing and each day you dri­ve past, your mind can­not help but glance over to look at the progress,” she ex­plained.

Ac­cord­ing to Galy, for most peo­ple build­ing out the foun­da­tion is un­in­ter­est­ing and takes way too long, but for the prop­er­ty de­vel­op­er, the ar­chi­tect and the de­sign­er who know what the fin­ished prod­uct is sup­posed to look like, they vis­it the site and see the foun­da­tion be­ing cast as the start of some­thing beau­ti­ful.

“That’s how these last two years have been for us,” she said adding, “We are now see­ing some of the foun­da­tion blocks at the cusp of roll­out, so there’s a lev­el of en­thu­si­asm, en­er­gy and ex­cite­ment that con­tin­ues to fu­el the team to con­tin­ue to build. Looks good.”

For the nine months end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2021, ANSA Bank record­ed a net loss of $15.7 mil­lion.

Ac­cord­ing to Galy 2021 was a set­tling year where the bank fo­cused on bring­ing Bank of Bar­o­da’s lega­cy port­fo­lios in line with a more con­ser­v­a­tive group phi­los­o­phy.

Mov­ing for­ward Galy said she’s cer­tain that the mar­ket would look favourably at the im­prove­ments on all busi­ness lines dur­ing the sec­ond year of op­er­a­tion.

She said the bank has al­most dou­bled its cus­tomer base since tak­ing over the op­er­a­tion.

“We are at a ges­ta­tion pe­ri­od in our life cy­cle, with a lot of ex­cit­ing things ahead of us, so I have no doubt that the busi­ness will go from strength to strength in the fu­ture. If we re­main true to our vi­sion to make bank­ing sim­ple and we are suc­cess­ful in be­com­ing trust­ed part­ners to our cus­tomers look­ing af­ter their well-be­ing, their suc­cess will un­doubt­ed­ly be ours,” Galy added.