Monday, July 20, 2009

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Scotia introduces Saturday banking ... kind of By INDERIA SAUNDERS ~ Guardian Business Reporter ~ Inderia@nasguard.com: Scotia may be leading the local industry in terms of following global customer service trends, moving to establish Saturday hours for a new Caves Village branch. It's a facility aimed at the growing number of moneyed professionals calling the area home. The opening of its new "retail sale center" half-days on Saturdays for all services outside of cash transactions should develop more than goodwill among clients looking for the same sort of weekend access Americans enjoy. "Quite frankly, we're hoping it will grow our customer base," Scotia Bank spokeswoman Rekell Griffin told Guardian Business yesterday. "As part of the bank's overall strategy we have to look at ways we're going to expand and we have to look at areas we need to be present in. "It's thinking of our customers and what's convenient for them. . . if they're moving in a western area or southern area then we have to move where they are." It's a statement centered on the bank's decision to open its latest branch-of-sorts in the western plaza, following calls by members of the business community for banks to extend their hours in order to improve access. Griffin maintains, however, that the move was not made with any special focus on that group, but simply as a way of catching up with world markets. "It's not particularly targeted towards the business community," she said. "But this is something they would find beneficial [and] we realize that area is one of the faster growing areas in Nassau in terms of population and its populated by professionals, whose time especially during the week is extremely valuable." In that sense, she said the bank "thought to really accommodate them by giving them the opportunity to come and do banking at a time that's convenient for them." It's a statement that explains its choice of location in the expanding, but relatively sparsely populated western area. The choice may raise a few eyebrows given the program doesn't extend to the established branches in its network, those with equally well established clientele rolls and customers clamoring of extended hours. Griffin isn't offering any timeline for when those locations will see banking hours extended. In North America, banks continue to face allegations that they've concentrated on so-called affluent communities to the detriment of intercity areas, increasingly identified for bank closures. The phenomenon has in the U.S. led to a limited banking presence in even well populated urban centers. The result, say critics, has been to limit the access low-income families have to banking services like loans. That isn't the case with Scotiabank, given the several inner-city locations in Nassau, alone. There's some expectation that clients at those branches will in fact opt to transfer accounts to the new branch at the Caves Village or, at the very least, use its services. The Scotia move only partially answers a recent call from the former Bahamas Chamber of Commerce president. In a recent interview, Dionisio D'Aguilar pushed for at least one of the locally-based banks to extend their hours of operation to include Saturdays. Still, he doubted any of the local banks would in fact make the move any time soon. "When you're fat and making a lot of money there is very little incentive to change," he said then. "The banks really don't cater to the small businessman and small proprietorships are finding it difficult working within the structure they have designed and they should adjust it. "They should try to give back a little and make it easier for us to do business here." Unlike other locations, Scotia's caves Village location will not be open on Mondays. Thursday, July 2, 2009