CBTT signals major currency, regulatory shift in five-year plan

Geisha Kow­lessar-Alon­zo

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

The Cen­tral Bank of T&T (CBTT) is prepar­ing to roll out sweep­ing changes to the coun­try’s cur­ren­cy, fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tion and pay­ments ecosys­tem, as it tran­si­tions in­to a new five-year strate­gic cy­cle aimed at mod­ernising the fi­nan­cial sys­tem and strength­en­ing eco­nom­ic re­silience.

At the cen­tre of this shift is the Cur­ren­cy Tran­si­tion Pro­gramme, which will in­tro­duce a new Se­ries 2026 TT$100 note by Au­gust, fea­tur­ing the up­dat­ed na­tion­al Coat of Arms.

The move sig­nals the start of a broad­er over­haul of the coun­try’s phys­i­cal cur­ren­cy, sup­port­ed by up­grades to na­tion­al cash-pro­cess­ing in­fra­struc­ture.

The bank is al­so con­duct­ing a crit­i­cal re­view of the five-cent coin, with pro­duc­tion costs now es­ti­mat­ed at near­ly five times its face val­ue.

A de­ci­sion is ex­pect­ed lat­er this year on whether the de­nom­i­na­tion will be de­mon­e­tised, po­ten­tial­ly fol­low­ing the path of the one-cent coin.

To sup­port these changes, the CBTT has said it will launch a na­tion­wide pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion cam­paign, “Know Your Mon­ey”, in mid-2026, aimed at en­sur­ing a smooth tran­si­tion for busi­ness­es and con­sumers.

These ini­tia­tives form part of a wider trans­for­ma­tion agen­da as the Cen­tral Bank pre­pares to im­ple­ment its 2026–2031 Strate­gic Plan, which takes ef­fect on 1 Oc­to­ber 2026.

The plan, de­vel­oped through ex­ten­sive con­sul­ta­tions with staff and ex­ter­nal stake­hold­ers, is in­tend­ed to align mon­e­tary pol­i­cy and fi­nan­cial sec­tor over­sight with evolv­ing eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ties.

A key pil­lar of the new strat­e­gy is the mod­erni­sa­tion of fi­nan­cial reg­u­la­tion.

The CBTT has con­firmed it is mov­ing to ful­ly op­er­a­tionalise an en­hanced risk-based su­per­vi­sion frame­work across the bank­ing and in­sur­ance sec­tors, strength­en­ing over­sight in an in­creas­ing­ly com­plex fi­nan­cial en­vi­ron­ment.

This will be re­in­forced by the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Na­tion­al AML/CFT/CPF Pol­i­cy and Strat­e­gy (2026–2029), de­signed to bol­ster com­pli­ance with in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards on an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing and counter-ter­ror­ism fi­nanc­ing.

At the same time, the Bank is ac­cel­er­at­ing ef­forts to digi­tise the fi­nan­cial sys­tem.

Leg­isla­tive work is ad­vanc­ing on the Pay­ments Sys­tem and Ser­vices (PSS) Bill and Reg­u­la­tions, which will es­tab­lish the le­gal foun­da­tion for fi­nan­cial tech­nol­o­gy in­no­va­tion while en­hanc­ing con­sumer pro­tec­tion.

It notes that ear­ly gains are al­ready vis­i­ble, with reg­is­tered e-mon­ey is­suers such as WamNow Tech­nolo­gies ex­pand­ing dig­i­tal fi­nan­cial ser­vices across the coun­try.

Re­gion­al­ly, the CBTT is pi­lot­ing the Cari­com Pay­ment and Set­tle­ment Sys­tem (CAPSS), a plat­form ex­pect­ed to stream­line cross-bor­der trans­ac­tions and deep­en fi­nan­cial in­te­gra­tion with­in the Caribbean over the next year.

In­ter­nal­ly, the bank has be­gun test­ing su­per­vi­so­ry tech­nol­o­gy (SupTech), us­ing dig­i­tal plat­forms to im­prove re­al-time risk mon­i­tor­ing and da­ta an­a­lyt­ics.

The pi­lot phase is ex­pect­ed to shape a full roll­out of dig­i­tal su­per­vi­sion, en­hanc­ing the CBTT’s abil­i­ty to as­sess and re­spond to risks across reg­u­lat­ed in­sti­tu­tions.

The bank al­so re­it­er­at­ed its com­mit­ment to re­solv­ing lega­cy fi­nan­cial sec­tor is­sues, in­clud­ing ad­vanc­ing the liq­ui­da­tion of British Amer­i­can In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny (Trinidad) Ltd (BAT), with a fo­cus on pro­tect­ing pol­i­cy­hold­ers and main­tain­ing fi­nan­cial sys­tem sta­bil­i­ty.

The tran­si­tion comes as the CBTT en­ters the fi­nal months of its 2021/22–2025/26 Strate­gic Plan, mark­ing a shift from post-pan­dem­ic sta­bil­i­sa­tion to for­ward-look­ing re­form.

Over the past six months, the Bank has not­ed that it has al­so ex­pand­ed its re­gion­al en­gage­ment, high­light­ed by its par­tic­i­pa­tion in the CAF—De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

On Oc­to­ber 10 last year, Gov­er­nor Lar­ry Howai presided over the 186th board of di­rec­tors meet­ing of CAF, the first time the in­sti­tu­tion con­vened at that lev­el in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean.