Jun 2010 Financial News

Good response to mobile banking

Jun 08, 2010

THERE has been a good response by Barbadians to the new mobile banking service which First Caribbean International Bank (FCIB) launched last week in Barbados.

In fact, the Bank’s Managing Director for Retail Banking, Rolf Philips, described the response to date as amazing. Following media launch FCIB held a function on Saturday at its Warrens, St. Michael compound, to further highlight the system.

“After the media launch (last week) we started our advertising last Thursday and Friday and all of our branches started to sign customers up,” Philips told the Barbados Advocate.

“So just in the course of that week we signed up 237 customers for our mobile banking,” he said while also noting that during the function on Saturday other persons had come forward to sign up for the service.

Although other banks have versions of mobile banking in some jurisdictions, FCIB is the first bank to introduce it to Barbados. But Philips said that FCIB which operates in 17 locations across the Caribbean, has a very aggressive roll out plan for mobile banking. “So yes, we have a plan to roll it out within the course of the next two to three months in the territories where First Caribbean Bank operates,” Philips promised.

“We believe that our version of mobile banking in terms of what we bring to the market is going to bring a whole lot more services and features than even some of the more services that might exist with local banks in the region,” he remarked.

Noting that this is a very important development for FirstCaribbean, the Retail Manager, explained during the interview that the FCIB thought it fit to introduce the new facility given that the bank’s customers were asking for more convenience.

Philips stated that customers do not want to go into the bank to get basic information. “We have internet banking, but this is a service connected to your computer. We have smart phones that can roam on the internet but service is not yet fast enough to deliver that kind of information and at the speed customers require,” he further explained.

“So we introduced mobile banking to improve the convenience that customers can have in terms of access to their banking information,” he noted.

Once a FCIB customer with a mobile phone signs up for the service that customer can now access his/her banking information in Barbados and anywhere in the world.


Source:
Barbados Advocate
Tuesday June 8, 2010

http://www.barbadosadvocate.com/newsitem.asp?more=business&NewsID=10716