GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Com­ing on the heels of ma­jor top-lev­el ex­ec­u­tive an­nounce­ments across Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL), the Port-of-Spain-head­quar­tered re­gion­al bank­ing group con­firmed that Ed­ward Ince, a di­rec­tor of its T&T sub­sidiary Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd, had re­signed.

In a pub­lic no­tice pub­lished pur­suant to Sec­tion 64(1)(B) of the Se­cu­ri­ties Act 2012, Re­pub­lic Bank dis­closed that Ince’s de­par­ture of­fi­cial­ly took ef­fect on Oc­to­ber 15, 2026.

The no­tice was is­sued by RFHL’s gen­er­al coun­sel and cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Kim­ber­ly Erri­ah-Ali, and is for­mal­ly pub­lished in the news­pa­pers to­day.

Ince’s ex­it fol­lows a shake­up in RFHL’s ex­ec­u­tive suc­ces­sion plan.

On the day af­ter Ince’s res­ig­na­tion took ef­fect, on Oc­to­ber 16, 2026, the fi­nan­cial group con­firmed that Richard Sam­my had abrupt­ly ex­it­ed the or­gan­i­sa­tion af­ter 18 years of ser­vice, ef­fec­tive Oc­to­ber 14, 2026.

On Jan­u­ary 30, RFHL an­nounced that Sam­my would suc­ceed Nigel Bap­tiste as the group’s top ex­ec­u­tive, over­see­ing both the hold­ing com­pa­ny and its T&T sub­sidiary, at Bap­tiste’s re­tire­ment on Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

How­ev­er, the board re­versed its lead­er­ship plan, re­sult­ing in Sam­my leav­ing his post as group vice-pres­i­dent of RFHL and vice-pres­i­dent of Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd months ahead of the sched­uled han­dover.

To bridge the lead­er­ship gap, RFHL ap­point­ed Karen Yip Chuck as the in­com­ing group pres­i­dent and CEO of RFHL, as well as man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd, ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

Along­side Yip Chuck’s el­e­va­tion, the fi­nan­cial group an­nounced two ad­di­tion­al key ex­ec­u­tive ap­point­ments to bol­ster its se­nior lead­er­ship struc­ture. Paras­ram (Vic) Sal­ick­ram was named se­nior group vice-pres­i­dent of RFHL and se­nior vice-pres­i­dent of Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd, while David Robin­son was ap­point­ed group vice-pres­i­dent of RFHL and vice-pres­i­dent of Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd.

Re­pub­lic Bank has not yet dis­closed a suc­ces­sor for the board seat va­cat­ed by Ince.