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There’s an expression that’s familiar to many Barbadians: “What doesn’t happen in a year happens in a day.” When it comes to the use of technology, particularly in the financial sector, COVID has been that metaphorical day.
Paul Ashby, CEO of SigniaGlobe Financial, was a panellist at the Central Bank of Barbados and Financial Service Commission’s recent online discussion on “Technology and Customer Service in the Financial Sector”, where he shared that “we had to essentially become more equipped to service customers from anywhere we could because the customer need still existed… Although there was a lockdown and although we had restrictions, people had financial needs.”
Ashby said that his organisation was forced to find digital ways to complete processes that would traditionally have been done face-to-face, and that this has not only increased efficiency internally, but has also been quicker and more convenient for customers.
Fellow panellist George Thomas, Deputy Chief Information Officer at CIBC FirstCaribbean International Bank, confirmed that the pandemic has also altered the way customers are doing business. “What we saw was a significant uptick in the use of digital services starting April of last year and it has not decreased; it has multiplied. Whereas before we saw gradual increases… they went through the roof after COVID.”
Thomas said that his organisation has also had to enhance their capacity and to accelerate other online services that are intended to improve customer experience.
Colin Daniel, Principal Consultant at Strategic Consulting and Advisory Services, who was the event’s final panellist, acknowledged the strides the local financial sector has made, but noted that while the use of these technologies may be new to Barbados, they are not new. “Some of the things we’ve seen put in place over the last 12 months have been available in other jurisdictions from as early as 1998.”
He said that even as financial institutions have made progress, there is still a long way to go. He cited the fact that in many instances, organisations have simply transferred legacy systems in to the online space rather than embrace full digitalisation. “We need to get to a point where the amount of paper that’s handled to do a remote transaction is not the same level as we have to do when we do an in-person transaction.”
The question is, then, given that many of these technologies have been in use in other countries and regions, what’s causing the delay in adopting them in Barbados?
The panel offered three possible reasons.
The first is, quite simply, that digital transformation is an expensive exercise. “It takes a tremendous amount of capital investment, constant investment, to meet certain standards… and I think that is one of the things that has slowed down the growth of digital in our part of the world,” Thomas said. In particular, the cost of ensuring that client-information is secure is not a one-time expense. “We have to continuously improve. You cannot just say ‘I’ve spent $10 million this year in cybersecurity and I’m done’. No. Every year, you have to retrain yourself and constantly raise the bar.”
Daniel noted that in some cases, the legislation and facilities that could assist with digital transformation efforts exist, but the different players involved are not on the same page. As an example, he pointed to legislation on the use of electronic signatures, noting “that Act has been in place since 1999, but it is pointless to have a financial institution saying we will accept this’ and then we still see a situation where attorneys say ‘we still need to see original documents’.” Employees at organisations who remain wedded to old approaches also create barriers to progress, he noted. “You cannot have a situation where [a financial institution] has said ‘this must be digitised, we are digitising this’, but a staff member says ‘you can say what you like, but the client needs to come and do what I want them to do’.”
Which leads us to the third and perpetual challenge of culture. Ashby says that at his organisation, which has a lot of older clients, “we see a lot of apprehension in persons even giving out their account number…an account number is a sacred thing for some people. And there’s a notion that if they give you their account number, then you can have access to all their funds.”
Despite these challenges, however, the panel agreed that the only way to go is forward, and that the advancements that have occurred because of the COVID pandemic need to be built upon, not only for the benefit of the sector, but for the economy as well.