The Central Bank does not believe a decision by some commercial banks to reduce their in-branch operating hours is being unfair to customers.
Central Bank Governor Dr Kevin Greenidge gave the monetary authority’s position yesterday as he reported that these financial institutions were generally compliant with the Market Conduct Guideline which was launched last year.
He said any discussion on the matter required balance, pointing out that while commercial banks had announced reduced hours, two of them were “saying that they’ve increased online presence, they are doing onboarding faster, [and] there are more digital services available”.
Greenidge saw the changes as part of the push towards digitisation, which he expected without putting people, including the elderly, at a disadvantage.
“If you have one less hour to go in the bank, well, go online and do the activity. We are pushing digitisation, we are pushing to reduce costs. You know how the Central Bank has
worked in collaboration with the banks to improve product and service,” he said.
“We at the bank, we are now embarking in collaboration with the banking system [on] a project to modernise our payment system. I would like a year from now [to be] sitting here for people to say: ‘Man, we don’t go in the banks because we don’t need to go into the physical building, we can do all services online.”
He added: “So we don’t see it as unfair. No bank is going to want to lose money by closing an hour earlier. The fact that they have assessed that they can close an hour earlier means they have assessed that that is probably one or two people just coming in during that time and those services can also be done online.
“So to me, it’s . . . part of a development process, but we, of course, will continue to monitor and let you know.” (SC)
