En­ter the dis­rup­tors.

At 9 am on Tues­day, af­ter the coun­try cel­e­brat­ed the East­er long week­end, ANSA Bank opened its doors for the first time mak­ing it the newest en­trant to this coun­try’s fi­nan­cial sec­tor.

But ANSA Bank is not afraid of be­ing in that po­si­tion.

In fact, they are rel­ish­ing it.

“One of the things about com­ing last, or com­ing be­hind, or en­ter­ing the com­mer­cial bank­ing space late is that it gives you an op­por­tu­ni­ty,” ANSA Bank’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Robert Le Hunte told Guardian Me­dia.

“Com­ing late in­to the sys­tem would mean we need to do things dif­fer­ent­ly which is in keep­ing with what is hap­pen­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly,” he said.

Le Hunte said in­ter­na­tion­al­ly the mar­ket cap of Pay­pal, which is a fin­tech-type com­pa­ny, is now worth more than long-stand­ing fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions JP Mor­gan and Bank of Amer­i­ca.

“So to put that in­to con­text it tells you that bank­ing as you know it is chang­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. In North Amer­i­ca 60 per cent of all the in­stal­ment loans, con­sumer loans, are re­al­ly done by fin­tech- type or­gan­i­sa­tions not nec­es­sar­i­ly com­mer­cial banks,” Le Hunte said.

“A big part of the pay­ment busi­ness is not done by com­mer­cial banks any more, so the com­mer­cial bank­ing busi­ness is be­ing dis­rupt­ed and as you know bank­ing is an old tra­di­tion that has been around for a num­ber of years and it is prob­a­bly one of the last to be dis­rupt­ed but the dis­rup­tion has start­ed,” he said.

Le Hunte said ANSA Bank is now en­ter­ing the bank­ing sec­tor with that lev­el of dis­rup­tion tak­ing place in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and there­fore can­not op­er­ate as though it is busi­ness as usu­al.

And they do not in­tend to.

“There­fore we need to then look at how could we be the dis­rup­tor in the bank­ing sec­tor busi­ness with­in this space in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the wider Caribbean,” he said.

Le Hunte said ANSA Bank is seek­ing help the un­bank­able.

“So the mod­els that we are look­ing at is a num­ber of oth­er mod­els around the world, Dis­cov­ery Bank and a num­ber of oth­er banks that are lever­ag­ing tech­nol­o­gy, lever­ag­ing some of the work that is be­ing done in the fin­tech space, lever­ag­ing things such as ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and look­ing at see­ing how we could use that to pro­vide a dif­fer­ent type of ser­vice to the ex­ist­ing bank­ing cus­tomers and al­so there is still a lev­el of un­banked in T&T and I think we could then deep­en our re­la­tion­ship in­to get­ting a share in­to that side of the busi­ness, al­low­ing them to have ac­cess to bank­ing ser­vices,” Le Hunte said.

On De­cem­ber 11, 2019, ANSA Mer­chant Bank Ltd signed a sales agree­ment with Bank of Bar­o­da (Trinidad and To­ba­go) Ltd.

The sale was of­fi­cial­ly ap­proved by the Cen­tral Bank on No­vem­ber 20 last year.

And for a month the Bank of Bar­o­da (T&T) con­tin­ued op­er­at­ing be­fore it was of­fi­cial­ly re-brand­ed as ANSA Bank.

“Bank of Bar­o­da or the pre­de­ces­sor bank was a very small bank and that is the bank that we pur­chased,” Le Hunte said.

In all Bank of Bar­o­da had three branch­es in Port-of-Spain, Ch­agua­nas and San Fer­nan­do.

Or as le Hunte prefers to call them “touch points.”

But while the bank it­self may be small it is part of the larg­er ANSA McAL re­gion­al pow­er­house.

Le Hunte said the bank is hop­ing to lever­age that strength with­in the con­fines of the fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tions.

Cur­rent­ly, ANSA McAL has around 6,000 em­ploy­ees.

“I see a num­ber of ways in which we could work to­geth­er to pro­vide bet­ter ser­vice to our mem­bers of the group and the wider pop­u­la­tion. So yes, we in­tend to with­in the bound­aries that are pro­vid­ed by the reg­u­la­tor to lever­age that po­si­tion as best a pos­si­ble,” he said.

Be­cause of its role as the new kid on the bank­ing block, Le Hunte said ANSA Bank will not have some of the lega­cy is­sues that crip­ples move­ment in oth­er banks.

“The pan­dem­ic has re­al­ly has­tened the banks, nor­mal­ly banks are not a group of peo­ple that are very re­spon­sive, tra­di­tion­al­ly they take long to re­spond and I think the pan­dem­ic has has­tened a num­ber of banks to move to­ward pro­vid­ing so­lu­tions to in­ter­act with cus­tomers via dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tions mech­a­nisms and I think that has hap­pened,” Le Hunte said.

Con­tin­ued on Page 3

“But I has­ten to add that there is a dif­fer­ence be­tween a com­mer­cial bank with dig­i­tal chan­nels and a dig­i­tal bank. So a lot of banks, be­cause of their lega­cy sys­tems, they are pro­vid­ing cus­tomers with a dig­i­tal chan­nel but straight-through pro­cess­ing and board­ing of cus­tomers and the way how dig­i­tal banks op­er­ate, they have not ful­ly done that,” he said.

Le Hunte promised ANSA Bank will put its mon­ey where its mouth is and in­vest in tech­nol­o­gy and be­come a dig­i­tal bank.

“We have to change our op­er­at­ing sys­tem, we have to in­vest in cer­tain things up­front and there­fore we will not be at­tempt­ing to be a tra­di­tion­al bank with all the branch­es and so forth we will be look­ing at us­ing tech­nol­o­gy to get to the cus­tomers, so we see this (a cell phone) as our branch,” he said.

The goal, Le Hunte said, is to even­tu­al­ly have cus­tomers do­ing 90 to 95 per cent of their busi­ness on­line.

“And by virtue of be­ing able to use tech­nol­o­gy we will hope to be able to pass some of the ben­e­fits that we de­rive from the use of tech­nol­o­gy by hav­ing more com­pet­i­tive rates and al­low­ing the cus­tomers to have more com­pet­i­tive ser­vices and so forth,” he said.

“We have bought a bank. The re­al­i­ty is we are a small bank with ex­ist­ing sys­tems and there­fore a lot of the digi­ti­sa­tion that we talk about is what we need to in­vest in to get us there and a lot of what you are see­ing will hap­pen in the mar­ket over the next 12 to 15 months, fair­ly quick­ly, but right now as it is we do of­fer all of the tra­di­tion­al bank­ing ser­vices and lot of what needs to hap­pen, you do need to come in­to the bank­ing hall,” he said.

Le Hunte re­as­sured the bank’s cur­rent cus­tomers that there will be no changes at this point to the bank’s process­es.

All of the se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures which pro­tect their funds and bank­ing trans­ac­tions will re­main safe­ly in place, he said.

As such loans, mort­gages, and any oth­er re­la­tion­ships with the Bank will be main­tained as be­fore.

Le Hunte said ANSA McAL’s de­ci­sion to buy a bank at this time showed its com­mit­ment to T&T and the wider Caribbean re­gion.

“One can con­sid­er it chal­leng­ing to en­ter in­to bank­ing in a present econ­o­my which is very un­cer­tain. If you tell me what pan­dem­ic will do? What the econ­o­my will look like to­mor­row or the next three to four years? It is very dif­fi­cult to plan,” he said.

“You have to have a long-term vi­sion and you have to have con­fi­dence in the peo­ple of T&T and you have to have a com­mit­ment to T&T to take the plunge be­cause bank­ing is not about mak­ing mon­ey to­day, bank­ing is about a long term per­spec­tive and there­fore I am in­deed proud to be part of the group,” he said.

“To be able to be part of this ad­ven­ture in­to bank­ing at this time es­pe­cial­ly when dif­fer­ent in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions are look­ing to ex­it, Bar­o­da ex­it­ed, we hear about oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions try­ing to re­duce their foot­print, we hear some of them want­i­ng to sell, Sco­tia is sell­ing their op­er­a­tions in Guyana, Roy­al Bank is sell­ing some of the op­er­a­tions in the Caribbean. A lot of the in­ter­na­tion­al banks are look­ing to ex­it the re­gion, so I think that is one good thing, that speaks vol­umes in the group in­vest­ing in the long term fu­ture of T&T,” Le Hunte said.

Le Hunte and ANSA Bank’s chair­man David Du­lal-White­way have over 30 years of lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al bank­ing ex­pe­ri­ence at the most se­nior lev­els be­tween them­selves.

The board has a “good com­bi­na­tion of youth and ex­pe­ri­ence” and is in tune with the dig­i­tal prospects, he said.

To fur­ther strength­en the bank, Le Hunte said ANSA Bank is al­so hop­ing to get for­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai to al­so even­tu­al­ly join the board.

ANSA BANK Board in BOX.

David Du­lal-White­way - Chair­man

Robert Le Hunte - Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor

Gre­go­ry N. Hill

An­gel­la Per­sad

Kath­leen Galy

Eileen Rud­dy

Giselle Thomp­son

Jon Paul Mout­tet

Frances Bain Cum­ber­batch

Gabriel Abed