Feb 2010 Financial News

RBC executive: All types of lending down

Feb 10, 2010

With the exception of residential mortgages, all other types of lending are down, said Jim Westlake, a top executive at Royal Bank of Canada, which acquired RBTT in mid-2008. “Our numbers and projections, as you would expect, are affected by the economy. I would say your reduction in Trinidad, for example, other than residential mortgages, all lending is down,” said Westlake, RBC Group head, international banking and insurance. “Obviously, we’re down. Less money is going there in total because of less demand.” He was speaking yesterday at a breakfast media briefing, which preceded a board meeting, at RBTT’s head office on St Clair Avenue, St Clair. Westlake said the Caribbean had demonstrated over the years a “great resilience to go through economic disruption and still bounce back.” On the prime lending rate, including RBTT’s, having gone down to 9.50 per cent per annum, Westlake said how long RBTT will keep its rate at that level was a question better posed at the Central Bank. “They lowered the government rate,” Westlake said.

“Rates generally here would be higher than average. Globally, there are many countries where the central bank rates are zero or close to it. “I think for all banks, you work out the spreads. I think it will be really more around what the government thinks is the best way to stimulate the economy. Over time the rates will go back up. Westlake said he expects that there might be some upward movement regarding interest rates by the third or four quarter of 2010. He said he thinks that RBC has “some wonderful capability” in online banking technology, which is an area he’d like to see “phenomenal growth” of in the next few years. He said RBC has 130 branches in the Caribbean compared to 440 in the United States, which indicates “how much busier your branches are—a lot of our activity, a lot of transactions.” He said he’d visited the St Augustine RBTT branch and was the “busiest branch he’d seen.” Asked whether RBC intended to maintain the same number of existing RBTT branches, Westlake said, “I would expect more. Right now we have no plans to be consolidating or closing. Our branches way across the region are busy.”

“We certainly don’t see any big consolidation activities at all,” Westlake said. “Compared to our US retail commercial banks, we have approximately the same number of staff working in the branches.” Regarding the management of RBC’s operations in the Caribbean, Westlake said its primary locations in the Eastern Caribbean—The Bahamas, Barbados and Cayman, were run out of RBC in Canada. “We had local management in terms of running the branch, but we did not have a lot of other infrastructure in the region,” Westlake said.


Source:
Sandra Chouthi
Trinidad Guardian
Wednesday February 10, 2010

http://guardian.co.tt/business/business/2010/02/10/all-types-lending-down-lead-business