BATT wants online pension payment

“It pains us to see the length of time the elderly have to line up outside a bank at the end of the month (to cash pension cheques). For the life of me, I cannot understand why you have 365 days in the year but you (mail) pension cheques on only 12 of them,” declared Bankers Association (BATT) director and Managing Director of RBC Royal Bank, Darryl White.

BATT would also like to see Government proclaim the remaining sections of the Electronic Transactions Act (2011), so that local banks can offer more convenient banking options, such as cheque deposits via mobile phone.

“As banks we will certainly do our part but there’s more to be done. How can we get greater efficiencies and better delivery to our customers; pensioners, disabled persons and so on? I cannot, for the life of me,” White said, “understand why we, as a progressive nation, still have to go and clear a cheque (in the bank). These are things that can be done electronically...

and we are appealing to the Government to be serious about this and drive this. We are certainly committed to working with the Government in that regard.” Agency banking legislation was another BATT recommendation, something which White explained would allow banks to, for example, “set up branches very quickly somewhere to serve the population. We need that passed as well. We need support on these.” He was speaking on Friday during a BATT press conference at Hyatt Regency, Portof- Spain which took place shortly after BATT’s executive appeared before a Joint Select Committee of Parliament. The fact that online banking in TT has no fees and is therefore not only convenient but cheaper to use than traditional teller banking, was another point BATT was keen on getting across to the public.

BATT President and Managing Director of Scotiabank TT Limited, Anya Schnoor, said banks “have invested heavily in technology” because they don’t want their customers having to spend time waiting in a line. She noted however that it’s still up to individual customers to sign up for online/mobile banking.

BATT Vice-President and Managing Director of Republic Bank Limited, Nigel Baptiste, explained that while there’s been “a steady pick-up”, the main reason online/ mobile banking is not at the level banks would like it to be is “an unreasonable kind of fear about security.” Baptiste revealed that local banks are actually “a little bit ahead of some of the international players because the architecture and the kind of investment that we have made in security for our systems, is at a level that we are very confident that you have to ‘come really good’ to hack into our systems