The bank of the fu­ture is here.

And its name is ANSA Bank.

This is how ANSA Bank’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Robert Le Hunte has de­scribed the newest en­trant to this coun­try’s fi­nan­cial sec­tor.

Le Hunte said with­in the next 15 months the bank is aim­ing to im­ple­ment dig­i­tal bank­ing on an “un­prece­dent­ed” lev­el lo­cal­ly.

And for that to hap­pen Le Hunte said there are three crit­i­cal in­gre­di­ents that ANSA Bank will use.

These are in­no­va­tion, re­spon­sive­ness and cre­ativ­i­ty.

But who can be­come an ANSA Bank cus­tomer?

“We of­fer cus­tomised fi­nanc­ing to large cor­po­ra­tions but meet­ing the need of medi­um, small and mi­cro en­ter­pris­es and sup­port­ing en­tre­pre­neur­ial Trin­bag­o­ni­ans are al­so our pri­or­i­ties. First-time home-own­er and salary em­ploy­ees meet­ing the rigours of day to day liv­ing are all wel­come. This is in­deed a bank for all,” Le Hunte said.

ANSA Bank of­fi­cial­ly opened its doors for the first time at 9 am yes­ter­day at its Port-of-Spain, Ch­agua­nas and San Fer­nan­do.

And it was a day of sev­er­al firsts.

Chef Ra­jen­dra Singh was the first cus­tomer to en­ter ANSA Bank’s Port-of-Spain branch at 9 am.

He re­ceived an em­bossed de­canter set from Le Hunte to com­mem­o­rate the his­toric mo­ment.

Eve­lyn Ramkissoon was the first cus­tomer at the San Fer­nan­do branch.

And ANSA McAL’s Group Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer An­tho­ny N Sab­ga III re­ceived the first cheque book.

Speak­ing to staff vir­tu­al­ly yes­ter­day ANSA Bank’s chair­man David Du­lal-White­way called it a “red-let­ter day” re­fer­ring to the bank’s sign.

“To­geth­er we will es­tab­lish mile­stones which will set the course of the bank, while not quite pi­o­neers in un­chart­ed ter­ri­to­ry, some may con­sid­er that we are punch­ing above our weight by dar­ing to launch a new bank dur­ing a pan­dem­ic,” Du­lal-White­way said.

“But it is for this very new nor­mal that the ANSA Bank mod­el is de­signed,” he said.

ANSA Mer­chant Bank com­plet­ed its ac­qui­si­tion of Bank of Bar­o­da’s op­er­a­tions in T&T last month.

The trans­ac­tion was ini­ti­at­ed via a sales agree­ment signed in De­cem­ber 2019 and was ap­proved by the Cen­tral Bank last No­vem­ber.

“We have been en­trust­ed with an ex­cel­lent foun­da­tion from Bank of Bar­o­da. To­day we take that foun­da­tion and launch ANSA bank in­to the fu­ture of end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties,” Du­lal-White­way stat­ed.