Imbert: Republic fee hike linked to asset levy

Geisha Kow­lessar-Alon­zo

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

For­mer min­is­ter of fi­nance Colm Im­bert has at­trib­uted Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd’s (RBL) re­cent de­ci­sion to in­crease bank­ing fees to ac­tions tak­en by the bank’s new­ly-ap­point­ed board, most of whom were se­lect­ed by the cur­rent Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Im­bert was re­spond­ing to ques­tions sent by Guardian Me­dia about his views on the fee in­creas­es and whether gov­ern­ment could in­ter­vene.

Ac­cord­ing to Im­bert, the de­ci­sion to raise fees was tak­en by RBL’s board of di­rec­tors, the ma­jor­i­ty of whom were ap­point­ed by the UNC gov­ern­ment in Oc­to­ber 2025.

As a re­sult, he sug­gest­ed that ac­count­abil­i­ty for the de­ci­sion rests with cur­rent of­fice­hold­ers rather than the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Im­bert ad­vised that ques­tions about the fee in­creas­es should be di­rect­ed to the UNC-ap­point­ed chair­man of the bank and to the cur­rent Min­is­ter of Fi­nance.

How­ev­er, he sug­gest­ed that the in­crease in bank­ing fees ap­pears to be linked to re­cent fis­cal pol­i­cy changes en­act­ed by the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Specif­i­cal­ly, Im­bert point­ed to the in­tro­duc­tion of a new as­set tax, de­scrib­ing the fee ad­just­ments as an ap­par­ent at­tempt by the bank to off­set the cost of that mea­sure.

“On the face of it,” Im­bert said, the fee in­crease seems to be a re­sponse by the bank to the new as­set tax in­tro­duced by the UNC Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, char­ac­ter­is­ing it as a way of re­cov­er­ing what he de­scribed as the “huge ex­pense” as­so­ci­at­ed with that tax.

In a re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia last week, Karen Yip Chuck, group vice-pres­i­dent, Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd and vice-pres­i­dent, Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd, Karen Yip Chuck, said while cus­tomer con­cerns about the in­crease in the bank’s fees are valid, there has been a “com­plex and cost­ly en­vi­ron­ment” cre­at­ed by cyb­ser­cu­ri­ty con­cerns and reg­u­la­tions re­quired for an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing frame­works.

“First­ly, it is en­tire­ly un­der­stand­able that busi­ness­es and in­di­vid­u­als are con­cerned about any in­crease in bank­ing fees. For mi­cro, small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es in par­tic­u­lar, trans­ac­tion costs, over­draft charges and penal­ty fees can have a re­al im­pact on cash flows and day-to-day op­er­a­tions, es­pe­cial­ly in a chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment,” she had out­lined.

Yip Chuck, al­so pres­i­dent of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, fur­ther ex­plained that there were many op­er­a­tional is­sues fac­ing lo­cal banks that may not be eas­i­ly no­ticed by the wider pub­lic.

“At the same time, it is im­por­tant for the pub­lic dis­course to recog­nise that com­mer­cial banks, both glob­al­ly and here in Trinidad and To­ba­go, are op­er­at­ing with­in an in­creas­ing­ly com­plex and cost­ly en­vi­ron­ment. For ex­am­ple, lo­cal­ly, banks are re­quired to make on­go­ing and sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ments in: Cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty and fraud pre­ven­tion, as fi­nan­cial crimes be­come more so­phis­ti­cat­ed; reg­u­la­to­ry and com­pli­ance frame­works, in­clud­ing AML/CFT (An­ti Mon­ey Laun­der­ing/Com­bat­ing Fi­nan­cial Ter­ror­ism) oblig­a­tions aligned with in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards and tech­nol­o­gy and pay­ments in­fra­struc­ture, to en­sure re­li­a­bil­i­ty, speed, and re­silience,” she said.

Yip Chuck stressed that these are not op­tion­al in­vest­ments, but are fun­da­men­tal to pro­tect­ing de­pos­i­tors, main­tain­ing con­fi­dence in the fi­nan­cial sys­tem and en­sur­ing that T&T re­mains in­te­grat­ed in­to the glob­al fi­nan­cial net­work.

Re­pub­lic Bank im­ple­ment­ed in­creas­es to fees on se­lect prod­ucts and ser­vices ef­fec­tive May 1, 2026.

This in­cludes high­er charges for rou­tine trans­ac­tions, over­drafts and missed pay­ments.

Ef­forts to reach Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo and Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs Kennedy Swarats­ingh yield­ed no re­sponse, as well as mes­sages sent.