Jul 2016 Financial News

Scotia's Schnoor advises: Reduce forex expectations

Jul 04, 2016

Scotiabank managing director Anya Schnoor is advising bank customers to reduce their expectations on accessing foreign currency.

She told the T&T Guardian the business community needs to make similar adjustments in terms of payments for goods and services.

“The forex challenge really is a factor of supply and demand and everybody needs to remember that the supply of foreign exchange to the market has been reduced significantly with the reduction in the price of energy,” she said.

“T&T’s economy, a large part of it—almost 50 per cent of its GDP—is generated by the energy industry, so with the fall-off in the price of energy, the supply to the market has been reduced. Demand has somewhat decreased, but it is still quite high, so there will be some imbalances and the Central Bank is working with the market.

“The Central Bank injects foreign exchange every two weeks, depending on what the situation is and that stabilises the market somewhat, but at the end of the day, it really is supply and demand.” Schnoor said bank representatives need to be having ongoing discussions with clients, especially small business owners, to ensure they were adapting to the new realities in the forex market, as well as the downturn in the economy. She said through the Scotiabank Insights programme small entrepreneurs are being guided on effective management strategies to ensure success in good and bad economic cycles.

“What the Scotiabank Insights series is all about is educating our customers, providing them with information around preparing financial statements, giving them tools to be able to help in their business environment and that’s something that we consistently do.

“We are training our staff on how to have conversations with customers that may be going through periods of difficulty and we are launching programmes to to assist customers whatever their circumstance may be. That’s a normal part of what we do. Our core value is to help our customers become better off whatever circumstance that they may find themselves in,” she said.

Schnoor added that the key to surviving any economic situation is to continually look for improvements in business processes. She said that is the case at Scotiabank.

“|In the good times we don’t get complacent. We’re continually looking at how we can do things better, how can we improve, how can we focus on making things easier for our customers to do business with us. We say to our customers when times are good, you take the revenue you have earned and reinvest it in your business to make yourself more efficient, and that’s a life lesson.

“Life is unsure. You never know whether it’s an illness that comes unexpectedly, a death in the family, whatever it maybe. It’s not only about the economy, it’s about being prepared for whatever eventuality could unfold. Sometimes we only live for today. When you are running a business, hiring people, you really have a responsibility to them and their families to do the right thing and that’s some of the advice that we are giving in our series,” she said.

On the issue of providing lines of credit to clients in the short term, Schnoor said for the first six months of the year’, demand was good ascustomers had a lot of confidence in the bank.

“The credibility of the bank was reflected in both its growing deposits and growing loan portfolios,” said Schnoor.

Source:
Sean Nero
Trinidad Guardian
Saturday July 2, 2016

http://www.guardian.co.tt/business/2016-07-01/scotia%E2%80%99s-schnoor-advises-reduce-forex-expectations