Day 1 Financial Services Panel Wendy Delmar

Let's try that again. How can you lead the effort in your company to develop a game-changing strategic plan? This morning we got some awesome answers to that particular question. It's the reason that we're here at the conference, the Caribbean Strategy Conference. And welcome back. I'm Francis Wade, if we have not met, and I'm going to hand over the mic shortly to my host for the afternoon, Daniel Caronel. Hi, Daniel!

Hi Francis, thanks for having me. Welcome back everyone.

It's a piece— we're not seeing you yet, Danielle. Okay, there we go.

Okay, technology working in our favor, thank God. So welcome back everyone. We are at, I guess you could say, part 2, our afternoon session. Um, as everyone comes back in, just reminding you, after a big lunch that I'm sure so many of us had encouraging a big stretch. This is a time to stay hydrated so we don't kind of fall apart in this afternoon session. And the good thing about remote, uh, or virtual conferences, we can get up and move around and jump up and down and, and keep our energy levels high. And we're gonna need those energy levels because we have a packed afternoon with some of the most awesome speakers. Before I do that though, just, you know, just let's have some fun. You know, what if we were to put a buffet together of all, you know, we're from so many countries, and if we put a buff together of everything that everybody had for lunch, you know, unique to their country, we're joined from people from Suriname, Guyana, Trinidad, you know, this would be a spectacular buffet. So tell me what was unique to your country. That you had for lunch. Put it in the chat. We have some fun. And, um, um, I was kind of hoping somebody would tell me they had some, um, I just feel some fish broth. Okay, I was feeling for some bus up shots, and I was just channeling my inner Trinidadian, um, um, craving some doubles. So let me know what you had for lunch. Um, just to let you know, for all who didn't get the, um, get the intro at the beginning, I am Danielle Terry-Long, your host for this afternoon session. I'm a communication strategist here in Jamaica, the managing director of DRT Communications, a marketing and media monitoring agency. DRT is located in Jamaica, but we have had the pleasure for the past 14 years of serving Caribbean -based companies. Given that I'm also in the, um, I truly believe in developing whole people, I also have this, um, other skill where I'm a life coach to many people because we believe in developing the whole person, the whole person who is engaged and productive in their whole life, so they're showing up with the highest levels of energy. Um, so that's just another quick thing about me, but as I told Francis, less about me and more about what we are here for. Thrilled to be your host today.

Let me just jump in with the, the last thing I, I wanted to make sure people— they didn't know this before, but we're doing another giveaway and we're giving away another full ticket. And this time I want in the chat, first person to put two of our speakers, presenters of the downloads, again, who are from overseas. As in not from the Caribbean. The first person to put those two, and then Daniel, I'm going to disappear and then I'm going to bring up, bring up your panel.

You all set? Wonderful, I am all set. I am also feeling slightly jealous of the curry goat and roti and Julie mangoes that are in the, the, in the chat. So you know, we are going to be introducing this afternoon our financial panel. We're going to have a panel on energy, and then we're going to be joined by Dr. Richard Rommel, a global authority on, um, on strategy described. Um, our first panel will be talking about the latest insights in the financial industry, and our panel will be delving deeply into what new strategies will be implemented in this space, what are the new ways of working, operating, and of course growth opportunities, actionable items that we can all take in our organizations. Move into our energy panel, much of the same Caribbean industry leaders speaking about what's happening in this space. And then right before our networking session, we're going to be joined by Dr. Richard Rommel, who has published the book The Crux. And if you haven't read it, I recommend that you do because it walks us through how leaders need to show up in a new working environment with powerful— as powerful business strategists. So as I said, less of me and more of why we are here. Less of Juliette Mangos from Rockseed. I'm still feeling jealous. And I'm pleased to welcome Wendy Del Mar, who is going to move us through the financial services panel. If you don't know Wendy, as I don't think I have met her, when I read about her, I think the most The thing that stood out the most for me is where she says she's an advocate for resilient— a resilient financial services sector, optimizing network events and driving bespoke training for members. Advocating for a resilient financial services sector with someone who has that as a mission, I have— I am so inspired to keep us moving. I'm so inspired to hand over to you. Thank you to our amazing panelists who are joining, and I'll allow Wendy to take us through who they are. Hi, Maryam. Special hello to Maryam, just because I know her and I love her dearly. Wendy, our advocate for resilient financial services, over to you.

Thank you so much, Danielle. I listened intently as you spoke about all of the things that we have had for lunch today, and I couldn't help but say, I feel like a traitor. I went all the way out of the Caribbean to have a little bit of Chinese. And then I heard you say drink water, and immediately, being the Caribbean girl that I am, I thought drink water and mind your business. But yeah, you know what, no, we want us to get really up into each other's business this afternoon as we continue the dialogue. I read through some of the script earlier, and I realized that this is a high-energy group of us sitting here, and I'm equally pleased to present my panel. So let's start off so that we can make the most of this afternoon. It is a distinct pleasure to join us here this afternoon. Special thanks to our hosts Dale and Francis for the vision of bringing us together for what is ultimately the critical topic of leveraging the pandemic and planning for accelerated change in financial services. As Danielle mentioned, I am your moderator for this segment, Wendy Delmar, CEO of the Caribbean Association of Banks, and it is my pleasure to introduce my very distinct and esteemed panel for your time this afternoon. And I have no doubt that there will be much sharing as we go through, and certainly a lot of thought-provoking exchanges will go on as we continue through the next hour. So let me turn immediately over to Mariam. Mariam, why don't you kick off with the introductions, and then we go over to Tanya and Hubert.

Sure. Thank you very much, Wendy. And hello everyone. My name is— sorry, my name is Mariam Robbins. I'm currently the CEO of First Global Bank, which is a subsidiary of the Grace Kennedy Group. I have been CEO for the last 6 and a half years, and I'm actually demitting office in the middle of next month as I'm joining a US fintech company focused on emerging markets across the world on August 1st. So it's really a pleasure to be here, and thanks everyone.

Oh, fantastic! Then we caught you at just the right time. That book is important. Wonderful, wonderful. But I'm sorry that we will lose you, but I have no doubt that whatever your next objective will be, it will certainly somehow filter back to the Caribbean. So huge congratulations. It certainly is their gain in getting you on their board. Certainly, certainly, Francis.

Mariam's microphone, it sounds like the microphone that is picking up is far away from you. Okay, we heard a, like, a distant echo kind of sound. Are you using your computer mic?

Yes, I believe so, but I will check on that.

Let me check on that. Yes, see if you can select a different mic because it sounds, it sounds very, very far away and very tinny.

Okay, all right.

Makes me think that it's doing one of those things.

Okay, thank you, Francis. Tanya, over to you.

Hi, and it's wonderful to be here, Wendy. I got excited when Mariam talked about going into fintech because I'm from the Bahamas. I'm the CEO of the Bahamas Financial Services Board, and we're certainly trying to make the Bahamas a global fintech hub. So maybe I'll be seeing Mariam in person soon. Uh, in my current role, in a nutshell, I'm an advocate for industry. I work closely with the government and I tell people why the Bahamas is the complete and compelling choice for financial services. By profession, I am an attorney and chartered banker and a compliance professional.

Fantastic, fantastic, Mariam. Herbert, and before I jump over to you, I really want to say to the audience, we want to hear from you. The reason why we're here is to really share best practices, experiences. We want to hear your thoughts as we go through today. So just a reminder, as we continue to chat with you, please, please, please interact with us as well a little bit so we know that we are hitting the mark for you, not meeting your objectives. Over to you, sir.

Well, good afternoon to all of those persons out there. My name is Hubert Edwards. I am currently living here in the Bahamas, but I am originally from Jamaica, Brownstown, St. Ann, Benning to be exact. My professional background is accountant. I'm a professional accountant, and I currently run an organization, Next Level Solutions, as the principal and CEO. And, you know, our focus is on, is on risk management, governance, compliance, operational effectiveness, and issues like those. Certainly a pleasure to be here and look forward to being a part of this conversation.

No doubt we look forward to all that is going to be shared this afternoon. So since we went with the ladies first, why don't we give the gentlemen an opportunity to get that has kicked off this afternoon. I'm going to leave the stage right there with you. Tell us a little bit about your presentation and focus this afternoon.

Well, we want to look at this whole idea of innovation within the financial services industry and the question of how do you leverage or how can we leverage what has been experienced during the pandemic, this period of significant uncertainty. How can that be leveraged for driving innovation on a go-forward basis? And what are some of the opportunities? What are some of the trends that we are seeing out there which have really emerged to create opportunities and to create a path as to why financial services businesses, financial services organization need to move in that direction?

Okay, fantastic. Before we go a little deeper into that, I wanted to highlight our sponsor for the afternoon session. This session, this segment specifically, is sponsored by the Bahamas Financial Services Board. Tanya, thank you so much for speaking with us and also recognizing the value of us being here. Okay, thank you. Um, as we move a little deeper into the segment, I think that it would be important that we get this ball rolling by getting our audience to participate a little bit and tell us about where they think we are. So I'm going to ask that we start with a poll. Let's talk a little bit about your organizations and let's have a little discussion with you on innovation and change. Can we bring that poll up? And we really want to ensure that you are there, are with us in all things. So we want to have some little touch points as we go through, make sure that you are fully engaged with us. Francis, can I ask you to support us with that one? Great, there we go. So does your organization have an active— I don't think that's the one that we were looking for, Francis. We're looking for, um, does your organization have discussions around innovation and change? And we wanted to kick this off really to ensure that we are going to get the most out of this discussion with our presenters this afternoon. So let's lock in quickly and then we will move on to our in-depth discussions and presentations. There we go. And so we will ask you to log in, lock in your responses, and let's kick it off. Does your organization have discussions around innovation and change? You have 2 seconds to go, so lock in. I voted. I hope you have as well. All right. Okay, so as it stands now, it looks like we're trending pretty well. With 64.29%. We still have some votes coming in. 50 of you, I think we have. We're waiting for another 15, 20 of you to vote in, including our panelists. So let's get your votes in. All right, so maybe we will top out at 60% of us saying yes. We still have a couple coming in. It's looking like we— the odds are sort of leveling out there. Robert, as these results are coming in, maybe we can lean on you a little bit to talk about the importance of innovation and change, particularly at this critical juncture. Let's see where we level off at.

You what?

Not sure if you can hear me.

Okay, sorry about that. No worries. So I wanted to start this conversation by saying, certainly, again, it's a pleasure to be here, and to talk about innovation in a financial services perspective in that arena. So a couple of quick perspectives. Innovation is really about finding a need for a new thing. And it may not be a brand new thing to the world. It may not be a brand new thing to the United States or some other countries, but it's very well a brand new thing to you or a new thing to you if you are not there, if you not yet have that. And innovation takes ideas. This is just a perspective. It takes ideas and make money. So if at the end of the day you're not really geared at making money. You may be nonprofit, and that is fine. But in a business environment, when we're talking about for-profit, it's really about making money. So where do we look for these opportunities in order for us to innovate? Well, the starting point for that is, one, we need to identify whether there is a significant market need. Secondly, we need to look to identify where are the megatrends coming from? And then certainly in the third instance, we need to look internally at our capabilities, our capacities, our competency. One of the things that we will have to, we can easily take from the pandemic is that the pandemic created boom in one full swoop, a significant market need whatsoever that was, it was kind of really huge and big for everyone. And there were certain trends. The biggest trend that was coming out of this whole pandemic environment was about digitalization and digitization, digital banking, all of that revolving around these things. And so we want to look at, you know, when we, when we, when we talk about this whole innovation issue, the, the, the, the crux of the question is what is the job to be done? And innovation opportunities come from understanding what that job is, what job is to be done. So during the pandemic, we had a very clear idea, regardless of what era that you were in, but we are focusing on financial services. In financial services, we readily understood what the job to be done was. We needed to get services to individuals who needed to stay apart from each other. It was social distancing, and we had to find a way to get service to them. And so multi-channel became a big factor. We know that in many countries within the region, we would have passed a bank and you would see person line up with the space between them and so on and so forth. How did we do that? How did we provide services without touching each other? And so for the institution, because we are— financial services is for-profit, we have to look at how we can remain and retain revenue and protect shareholders' value? How can we maintain and innovate in a way that we can provide the social distancing so we have digitization, digitalization? And of course, there was this big security issues where persons were out there working from home. You had VPN access, different level of controls around home versus work. And so the pandemic gave us some insight into what companies can do and how companies can react. The businesses either reacted or responded, and depending on how prepared they were, they were either reacting or responding, and the quality of the response was determined by the preparation work that was done. Some of, some of those companies obviously did well. They had new lines, they have expanded products and services, and some of them took it on an opportunistic point of view to really create new revenue. For example, persons got into COVID testing and made millions and millions of dollars. Some of them still have some things to clean up. So they went above and beyond what their initial capabilities was. But as we come out of this pandemic environment, we now need to kind of fix that. So it kind of gave us a framework as to what needs to be done when we're talking about innovation. And I'm going to give you a 5-point stage. So the first one is idea generation. The second is advocacy and screaming. Then you have experimentation, commercialization, and then the implementation. What became very, very true and very understandable is that the pandemic crushed many of those stages together. And we come to realize that, guess what, we can innovate and create change way quicker than we have done in the past. So the question now is, how can we work more quickly? How can we work smartly? How can we do this in a more strategic way to ensure that we are bringing value, that value is being created for all the stakeholders, not just the internal customer, not just the, the owners, but to all stakeholders, especially within the financial services? You have regulators, you have individuals who depend on the system, and of course being part and part of the global financial system, you have to manage your organization in such a way as not to disrupt or to negatively affect global financial stability. So what are some of the major lessons? One is agility. You have to become very, very agile. So you put your organization in a space where you can be agile. Of course, leadership is crucial. And one of the things that we can take from the pandemic is simply this. No leader was running around thinking, well, who have the bigger office, who was in the corner office, which department was going to get the credit. Everyone was focused on how do we deliver the service. And so that points to the fact that the focus of leadership is very, very much important and fundamental in this innovation. Now, the quality of the leaders who were available to that organization would depend on the quality of the outcome, but the focus is one of the things that we can take away from the pandemic. We have to pay attention to the fundamentals. Those who had the fundamentals down, those who had the systems in, those who had mechanisms and ways of working through these issues always come out better at the end. And so as financial services industry, you have to pay attention to that. Then you must speed up adaptation of technology. One thing which the pandemic did, like we are doing now, it placed the entire world in front of a screen. It put the entire world online. So in this innovation process, one of the things that we must learn, or a lesson that we can take away, is how do you get your market, how do you get your target to be focusing in on the innovation that you're trying to deliver? And of course, you have to create that urgency. The pandemic tells us that we have to create that urgency to get from stage 1, which is idea generation, and get very quickly to idea implementation. In the process of our response or reaction to the pandemic, that wasn't always clear. We just moved from, okay, we need to get some customers some money, we need to get online banking, we need to get our ATM smart, and we just move from problem to solution. Wasn't trying to kind of, you know, we're not going to experiment and do this. And so it's important that we start to learn and understand that out of this whole development process, the pandemic has taught us that we can crunch the time necessary in order to get to the place where we want to get. Now, I have some examples of some things that we need to do within financial services. So we have to look really at online exposure and participation. We were fixing this whole idea of distance and this social distancing, as a result of that, we were looking at the new delivery channels. We had to know that we had a window of opportunity. And this is very important. In this whole innovation space, we have to look for the windows of opportunities. We also have to be opportunistic. In financial services, there were certain regulatory barriers that were kind of brought down or relaxed and gave us a chance to do something. So in financial service, we also have to be able to grab that, and we also need to get into the business of lobbying and become a little bit more opportunistic. And then you have to figure out what is the macro issue in play. Like, for example, now that countries have been beat up by the pandemic and nationally we need revenue, the country needs revenue, the government is going to facilitate more, it's going to encourage more. So financial service have to grab onto that and to move the— move your personal institution, but obviously you are moving the entire industry. So what is the big question to answer? First of all, you need to ascertain very, very quickly what is the value proposition in this whole innovation thing you're thinking about. So what is your value proposition? And then you need to get really, really, really, really good at managing uncertainties. If you do not come out of the pandemic with a lesson— because the pandemic represented a significant amount of complexities and uncertainties— and so if you can deliver in a pandemic environment, the one thing you must be good at is managing uncertainties. And if you do that and do that effectively, then certainly at the end of the day, the finance— your financial services institution regardless of what era of the competitive arena you play in, will be in a position to deliver innovation after innovation. And we must do that because the industry, financial services itself, is going to be radically changed in a couple of years. I have some other points, but I'll leave it there, and we can explore those in the question and answer session.

Wow, you know, that is so much information that was given. I was taking copious notes, as you spoke, and I assure the audience, this is not the first time that we're speaking, but I am not sure whether or not you recognized exactly how many bits of golden information came at you there. There's a lot more coming from that. I would love you to contribute in the comments on some of the key takeaways that you picked up while this first presentation was going on. I'll share with you just a couple of mine: a sense of urgency, agility, leadership culture, And because we spoke so much about innovation, and thank you so much, Kelly McIntosh, for your contributions so far, I want to take us directly into Tanya because I think Tanya is going to leverage the conversation there. So Tanya, over to you.

Well, good afternoon. Excuse me. As Hubert was talking, I was saying he outlined for us excellently, um, just how— what innovation is about. And then I thought Innovation creates pain. Um, he talked about it. There are pain points when it comes to— we're talking about change, we're talking about transformation. And he rightly acknowledged that there are varying stakeholders. You have your external stakeholders, you have your customers, your shareholders, your staff. And then all of that, um, you want to make sure that as you innovate you mitigate against resistance to change, and you ease those pain points that come with innovation. That was the first thing that came to mind, and I'm going to share how I think you might mitigate resistance or, or make sure that innovation is a smooth, um, transition within your organization. But I also noted from your first poll that 58% of our participants indicated that they are having discussions around innovation. And then that led me to ask, well, who is engaged in those conversations? Um, um, which of the internal stakeholders are having these discussions about innovations— innovation? Is it just at the board level? Is it that department heads are also involved if you're in a in our retail bank, our branch managers involved. Because my point and my presentation is this: in order to create an agile financial institution, one that has a culture that is characterized by innovation, you need to have all of your critical stakeholders engaged. It cannot only be at the board level and you have edicts coming out and saying this is the way this is the way that it's going to be, this is the new way. No, a multidisciplinary approach needs to be taken because customer service is impacted, your technology department is impacted, there may be an opportunity to engage with your legal department. So all of the relevant stakeholders need to be engaged in these conversations around innovation. So in that 58%, I hope that everybody is at the table. Certainly leadership sets the vision and the strategy, but that needs to be informed because in engaging in that discussion, you are able to conduct an impact assessment. You're able to see whether there's cyber risks that exist if you're moving towards digitization and how you mitigate those risks. You're able to assess how clients are feeling about the change and whether there are any adjustments that can be made. And so all relevant voices need to be at the table, um, when you're engaging in innovation. I mentioned a risk assessment. With change comes risk, and so you need to consider the business risk, you need to consider legal, technology, people risk. We don't think enough about the people risk. How will jobs be affected? Will there be job losses with digitization? Um, you know, manpower needs change. Is there an opportunity to transition some of your people to different areas? All of these are considerations when you talk about innovation. Um, also at another conference out at CAB, at the Caribbean Association of Banks conference, we talked about ESG. You need to think, factor in what are the environmental, social, and governance issues that ought to be considered. All of this has to be considered when you're talking about innovation. The— so a multidisciplinary approach, risk assessment. Also, I believe that you need to have a robust communications protocol, and that needs to be developed to articulate why the change is taking place, how it is taking place, and the support that be— will be available to those who are impacted by the change. So you have to have your key messaging down, and then you're also going to have to engage with your change agents within your organization. When you're talking about innovation, um, the CEO can't run this race alone. It's a, it's a relay, and the baton needs to be passed on to other members of the team. I know Jamaica fancies itself to be some of the fastest in the relays, Bahamas, we like to try and take you up on it. But in this race for change, which is very fast, we need to make sure that for every leg of the race, change agents are engaged. And then you need a robust action plan. And once you've rolled that out, you want to keep testing it and checking it and do a post-implementation check to make sure that things actually went according to plan, and if it didn't, then you make the necessary adjustments. So I'm all about how do you get agile, what are the action steps to make sure that you deliver on the innovation that Hubert talked about.

Awesome, awesome, fantastic, Tanya. You know, it really is stepping stones and ensuring that as we continue to hop, skippity jump, across the pond, so to speak, of change and innovation and getting to the next level, that we take into consideration everyone who's going to be impacted so there's a seamless process. So Mariam, I think this is an excellent jumping point for you, so let me hand over to you. We haven't heard from you as yet this afternoon. I think you may be on mute, Mariam, although I'm not seeing it. Let's try again. Okay, while Mariam is getting that sorted out, I noticed that we got a little note in the, in the chat, and that spoke about clarification. Is it about easing pain points or about stressing and deepening the upside? Maybe pain is something that people can include and embrace if they see the potential benefit of short-term difficulty, or for long-term benefit. What do you think, Tanya?

Um, yeah, maybe, you know, there will be pain. So I guess the point that's being made is that with change there is going to be a stretch. Individuals have to stretch. But, um, when I talk about easing pain points, I'm talking about helping people to understand why that change is necessary, where they fit into it, the support that is going to be provided to them to equip them for the change environment, because unless people understand how they will be equipped to thrive and to grow in that new environment— and I'm talking about your internal stakeholders primarily— then for them there will be this anxiety or unease about the innovation that is taking place.

Absolutely. Okay, great. Uh, Mariam, let's get you tested and see if everything is coming up Fine and dandy.

All right, can you hear me now?

Much better.

Oh, great. Okay. All right. Hi everyone, thanks so much for— it's really good to hear from everyone so far. So I just will just share a couple points. I mean, look, as mentioned earlier in the panel, um, by panelists and in the conference, you know, our planet has been taken through unprecedented change with the pandemic, and it's resulted in health, social, and economic crises. So I wanted to just share a 3 key themes when we think about planning for accelerated change in the financial services sector. Um, the first theme that I wanted to share is really that digital transformation is upon us. However, I really want to talk about pitfalls to avoid because before the pandemic, so many of us were talking about pursuing digital transformation as the world moved into 4th Industrial Revolution, but since the pandemic, it has become necessary for survival. However, doing it wrong can set firms back significantly, and so therefore, just wanted to share some pitfalls to avoid. There are about 4. So one is, before diving fully into the product or process or service that your financial company is going to offer, um, through digitization, It's really important to do that high-level model on the investment required and the expected benefits, but don't stop there. Really break it down into easy-to-track metrics around when will you start earning income, right? And be very, very clear as to when revenue will commence, because a lot of times we get excited about our products, we know we have to make the investment, we know we have to do this, but then you get far down the cost side and it needs to— you need to ensure that the revenue is coming in pretty quickly within your timeframe as estimated. The second pitfall I would say, based on just what I've seen on boards I've sat on, nonprofit organizations and for-profit, primary research should be done to drive digital transformation. And what we mean by primary research is really the customer is at the center of what we're trying to do. They should be the anchor of what we're what you're trying to do. And so as you go into strategic planning, if you're thinking about financial services, which is going— which is extremely dynamic, sometimes you forget about the customer. And it can be very, very basic. The basic question to answer is, what is the pain point being addressed? The third pitfall is around this idea around cultural transformation. I hope you can still hear me, it's raining very heavily. But cultural transformation Communication is key, and it really should be twinned with digital transformation. And a lot at the heart of cultural transformation is communicate, communicate, and over-communicate the same messages. Because what you're trying to do is change behavior. When you roll out an amazing app, how do you ensure that the processes you put in place or tweaked internally are being used by your team members? How are you ensuring that your customers know what to do differently. And then just the final point around digital transformation being upon us and things to be aware of is really don't underestimate the customer education and awareness building and how difficult it can be, but how— and how tedious it may seem, but how valuable it is. And you know, when I personally have to open an account or download an app to access a service, I'm one of those people I may look like a millennial, but I'm so far from being a millennial. I need someone to get on the phone with me and talk me through what exactly I must do. Sometimes my colleagues who are a bit younger are like, oh my goodness, Maren, just read the instructions. And so I really believe this customer awareness and customer awareness building is so critical. So that's my first theme of three themes I wanted to share this afternoon. Uh, my second thing is around risk management. Not so excited when you hear accelerated change and innovation and what we're planning for. And Tanya touched on it very well, but I wanted to just share for emphasis as well. It's important to get out ahead of this. You know, in all the strategic planning, risk management usually falls to the end. They probably get the last half an hour of the day, but it is so important because any organization, especially financial services, as pushing to be very innovative, the most important thing in my opinion to start with is a good solid foundation around compliance and risk. If we are a center of excellence around compliance and risk, innovation can run on those rails so much faster, more efficiently, and in a more differentiated manner. So because of that, you know, I just share things like data. Don't lose sight of things like data protection rules, particularly as we transact more now in the digital space. Cybersecurity, now as sensitive data is being passed across the internet. Security awareness training for your team members. The larger companies, I know at Grace Kennedy and First Global Bank, we have security awareness training at least every year. You must complete it and you must pass, and it's at least 45 minutes, very interactive. But you'd be surprised how much you learn that you think you know, but you actually just didn't know about some basic practices about how your phone or your computer, when you're connected to your home internet, and how you operate within the ecosystem of your organization. Basel III— listen, Basel III is coming. The Caribbean is getting out ahead of it, right? Because, you know, we're in one of those jurisdictions where we need to show that we're very compliant, right? You will not need to set aside capital just for liquidity, solvency, and credit, but now it's going to include market risk and operational risk. I share these things because when you go into strategic planning, I think it's important to give it as much, you know, maybe not the same amount of time as growth-oriented topics, but it's so important because it can slow down or sink your growth and innovation. BCP planning, we spoke about that earlier. I think a poll is coming. And just finally, the takeaway here is just allow sufficient time in any strategic planning process to discuss risks and the mitigating actions that will be taken. And then my third and final comment, and I— can you still hear me? Okay, you can still hear me. Okay, great, because I can't hear myself, the rain is so loud. But anyway, the third and final comment, our theme is around innovation to drive the underbanked and unbanked financial inclusion. It's really hard for me to talk about the pandemic— it's hard not— it's hard to talk about the pandemic in the context of financial services and not speak about financial inclusion, and really how the financial services sector needs to reach those who are not often thought of or who are not often have that easy access to the formal sector. And I'll give our own experience. At First Global Bank, we're very passionate about financial inclusion even before it was the thing. I think it's more the thing now because the COVID pandemic has shown us how interconnected we are and how much we have to consider our brother, our sister, even if they don't make as much as much money as a different broker or system, right? So everyone needs to be considered and included. However, it's about the how. And so the key is going to be around minimizing the cost to serve and really having sufficient scale to spread the costs. And at Grace Kennedy, we're coming out with an app soon, and that app will go off the— after our entire ecosystem of customers both within the financial group and within the food manufacturing and distribution sector. And I know a lot of financial services are thinking about that as well. The big, big deal about this is the inclusive effect of it. From a regulatory standpoint, you see things like CBDC, Go Jamaica. I think Bahamas is also there too, Go Bahamas, with coming out with a central bank digital currency. At the core of why our government regulators are pushing this is around financial inclusion, right? Getting more people access to more products and more services. I think also compliance, we spoke about earlier, really thinking through ways to ensure compliance as we go after underbanked and unbanked who may not have the same amounts of information readily at their fingertips. And then finally, ESG matters. I think Tanya Touched on it as well around this whole— it's hard to be a financial services company 20 years ago where it's all about profit, profit, profit. Now we really have to take a more stakeholder approach. And because I'm going into fintech— and by the way, now I'm going into a firm that focuses on emerging markets, I will be based in Jamaica, so I'm still committed to my region and my country. Um, but I just have to mention things like, do you know the difference between blockchain versus cryptocurrency? Well, if you work at the financial services firm, that's important to know. There's so many myths out there. You can do a whole panel on demystifying that. And I know Bahamas is way ahead of the game in the region in terms of establishing itself around pushing the envelope on financial services. But what are fintechs doing, and how can ecosystems— fintechs, banks, etc.— collaborate to meet the needs needs of the average consumer. Decentralized finance naturally benefits people with less access and power. However, customer education is key. Thank you very much. I'll just stop there.

Thank you so much. Awesome, awesome presentation, Mariam. Um, there are— I could see the hands and everyone is clapping. Can everyone hear me okay? Yes? Okay, great. We have our very first Question from the audience. Fantastic timing. And I know that you will be jumping at this, ladies, and perhaps you as well, gentlemen. How are the panelists viewing the rise in disruptive fintech in their own competitive calculus? Crypto, virtual banking, bankless money transfers, etc. Let me jump over to Tania just to give you a break there, Mariam. But certainly I think you have touched on that a little bit. So Tanya, why don't you tell us what's happening in, in Bahamas?

Yeah, thank you for the opportunity. Excellent question. I think there are mixed, there are mixed views on the rise in disruptive fintech in our space here in the Bahamas. Certainly on the point of financial inclusion, we've embraced fintech To the extent that our central bank, um, was the first, and the Bahamas was the first country, um, to issue a central bank digital currency. It's not a cryptocurrency, it's actually pegged to the Bahamian dollar, so it's valued one-to-one. But the whole aim of that was to enhance financial inclusion, saying that we're a country of some 700 islands and keys with a highly unbanked population and also islands that are now underserved because brick-and-mortar banks have actually closed their doors on some of those islands. We found it important to embrace fintech, particularly with the experience, uh, with Dorian, um, the Category 5 storm, um, and we know that storms are getting worse. And so for our remote islands financial inclusion was certainly the driving force for the embracing of fintech in that regard. Um, now the rise in disruptive fintech is not only affecting, I want to say, the domestic scene and, and local banking opportunities. Um, certainly in the international financial space, the Bahamas has seen an opportunity to attract fintech businesses, digital business, digital assets businesses to the Bahamas where they can headquarter their companies. And so we have some of the larger players, um, actually deciding to make the Bahamas home, creating opportunities for innovation, um, in financial services, um, and giving Bahamians access to participate in that space and to work in that space. And so I would say there is some healthy skepticism coming from traditional bankers around fintech, what it means for them, is it real? But it's also forcing them to look a little bit more closely, to transform in some respects, to embrace, um, digitization themselves. So we have had traditional banks who never played in the fintech space really set up subsidiaries, um, that's focused on banking fintechs. And so while they may have banked traditionally high net worth individuals, they're now branding themselves as the bank for fintechs. So they're seeing an opportunity there. Um, you're seeing some provide custody services for fintechs who are in the stablecoin space. And so there are some opportunities, but there is also healthy skepticism by, um, by some traditional bankers as well.

Okay, that is great insights. Um, Tanya, there is a follow-up question for you coming from Amy. How does the, the national crypto serve the underbanked— the unbanked, sorry— and is the Bahamas building cash access infrastructure for those whose money resides in blockchain.

So, um, how does it serve the— how does it serve the underserved? Well, basically through partnerships. So there is one part, there is a partnership with a payment service provider, and individuals can go and load up or purchase using fiat. You can purchase the Sand Dollar, which is the digital currency, and then when you're ready, and you can spend it and use it in various places. Um, at the moment it's really being piloted on a lot of islands. It's still a work in progress, but the government has put its full support behind it to allow persons, for example, to pay government fees and bills using the sand dollar or the digital currency. Um, and so there is a collaboration now as well with retail banks to ensure increased interoperability. That is the stage where we are at at the moment. But really, it's Family Islands who have been piloting and testing it. It's a matter of loading your wallet with these sand dollars and the ability to convert when you wish to, um, fiat currency. That was the first part of the question. Um, tell me the second part of the question.

Is the Bahamas building cash access infrastructure? For those whose money resides in blockchain?

Um, and I mean, I guess some—

I guess what they're looking for is off-ramping. How do they get access to the cash once they are in blockchain? And Maryam, maybe you have some thoughts as well, because I know that Jamaica is moving forward. But, um, Tanya, think about it a little bit and see whether or not you're at that stage.

Yeah, sure. And we've been looking at Bahamas very closely. They're in the region, and the Eastern Caribbean as well has a digital currency. Um, but I just want to make sure we're clear, the digital currency is not crypto.

Exactly, correct.

So, you know, financial, financial technology, fintech, is a very wide, correct, um, spectrum, and it's super interesting. But, um, what it is is a digital currency backed by— as Tanya said. And in Jamaica, what we're using is the wholesale model so that everything has to go through essentially banks and other partners. Just to answer Amy's question about how does the national digital currency serve the unbanked in these countries, what it is, Amy, is that to open a bank account in these islands, all of them are in the Caribbean, there is a lot of information that's required. Like, people joke about there's 9 10 pieces of documentation, it's a pain in the butt. And so when you have the digital currency, all digital currencies set up by the central bank will be accessed by the population through wallets. And so you can download as a citizen of the country or residents of the country your wallet and open an account and start to transact business and be kind of what we call a low KYC account, a low know your customer account. So what it does, Amy, is it brings more people into the formal transaction environment through these wallets using digital currency, and it's safe because it's backed by the currency of that country. Very different from crypto, which value fluctuates based on market supply and demand, and then Blockchain, which is very different, which is around how you move something from point A to point B where it's not replicated. So it's very strong. So, but that would be— I just want to go back very quickly about how businesses, especially banks, are thinking about fintechs, um, you know, the rise of disruptive fintech. A lot of the banks, certainly in Jamaica and Bahamas and other countries, we are aware and we've taken notes and we have a range of responses The first is we recognize that the first one or two players to the game wins, because there are only so many different apps everybody's going to keep downloading to do certain things. And the Super App is really the product right now, Amy, that's most needed, I could say, or addresses a pain point in the region. And on that Super App, you can order a credit card, you can pay your bills, you can move money, you can get remittances. So there are a number of services services that you can do. So what you find that we are doing in the competitive calculus is thinking about, do we— how much do we build ourselves versus partner? Who is our customer and who will we prioritize serving first? And then really thinking about how much advocacy as various banking associations in these nations, how do we advocate to the central banks, update our banking services act which regulates the various sectors, to account for this shift in digital and this kind of increased focus to digital.

Okay, fantastic, fantastic. Um, Hubert, I'm not sure if you wanted to add to this particular, uh, talking point, but certainly the points made earlier resonate in terms of the fiat currencies that are being introduced across our region. They are distinctly different from the technologies that are being used for the rails off-ramping, on-ramping of business that we see existing in the crypto space. So that is one of the differences that I think Mariam originally spoke to, in that we have a gamut of technology which is unfolding. And the region now, the Caribbean region, is very mindful that to implement these sorts of technologies, we also have to take into consideration cultural readiness, the education level of our people, the technological cost for the infrastructure as we continue to broaden our scope and play in this global field. But, uh, Hubert, let me give you a minute as well to chime in here because I think this is a really important question. But before you do that, I also want to say that we are ticking down on time, so please get those questions in. I know that they're probably locked in your head. Somebody else needs to share that question, so please send them over. We're here to help.

Go ahead. Yeah, uh, you know, as, as it relates to the financial services and the fintechs. Obviously, there is what I'm calling here a, a positive disruption which is taking place. I think it's going to be largely beneficial to financial services because it's somewhat of a democratization of financial services. As both Myriam and Tania mentioned, financial inclusion is a significant part of that. But as country people who are into track and field and go to the Olympics very often and win gold medals, right? This is like going to the Olympics. When Usain Bolt or Shaunae Miller or someone from the Caribbean goes to the Olympics, they are not running against any other individual based on Caribbean standards. They're running based on global standards. And so we are at the place right now where you are seeing this conversion of, um, this cryptocurrency discussion, um, you are seeing this, um, promulgation of central bank digital currencies, you're seeing this discussion around stablecoins. And, you know, despite what is happening in the script— the crypto space right now, I believe that through the stablecoins and the merging of central bank digital currency you're going to get that type of a revolution taking place in financial services. And so, you know, decentralized financing, the use of smart contracts, and so on and so forth, is where financial services is going to be in the not too distant future. And so as we speak about how we develop this and how we become more informed form player and get into the technology. We have to be mindful that the world is cantering at a fast pace, and we've been part of the global financial services sector, we have to catch up. And so, you know, I, I really believe that, um, you know, some of the things which has been done in Jamaica, and certainly what has been done right here in the Bahamas with their act and the movement of, you know, kind of You know, getting persons into that digital thinking is positive. It's happening elsewhere in the Caribbean, and I think that bodes well for our, our moving into more of a third— not third world, a first world type of a financial services environment, which I think is positive for the region.

Absolutely. I couldn't agree with you more that we are making significant strides despite the fact that some may say we were coming in from the back. And no, I'm not a sports person, but I can certainly tell you that this is a race that is going to be, you know, one to watch closely because the Caribbean is putting itself on the map in a very significant way. Mariam is moving to a US-based company, technology company, a lady from an island in the Caribbean, right? So there's much to be celebrated. I want to change pace just a little bit because I know we spoke about our readiness within the financial services sector. So let's talk about the fact that the pandemic was a catalyst for change, and we've heard it sort of resonate in all of the discussions today, but it is certainly not the end of the changing realities that we are going to continue to face. So my question to you is, what is it that you think we need to do in order to stay at pace and more importantly, to stick our heads out above and beyond what we are seeing as a fast pace of change and movement across the globe so that the Caribbean can remain front and center in being small, being agile, being responsive to change? What do you think we need to do? Let's start with Mariam.

Um, sorry, say it again about what do we need to do in terms of being—

what do we need to do to remain ahead of change?

Yes, I think so. The one thing I would say here, and I learned, I saw this most in the pandemic, was partnerships. I think it's important. Yes, I think it's important for us to really be open to and really build up core competency within our strategic plans and how we execute on forming partnerships and being very, very open-minded about how we can work through building the trust, measuring the outcome. If it doesn't work out, fail fast and move on. I think that is really important, Wendy, because one of the benefits of size— I work with First Global Bank. People don't realize how small we are because we're very— we're out there. We have a saying in Jamaica, we're little but we color. On. Because when you— the benefits of size is the flexibility and the agility, and you can partner and build out your growth strategy in a modular way. So that's what I would say, focus on building up competency and emphasizing partnerships.

Awesome. Tanya, go right ahead.

Yep.

Yeah, just following on from partnerships. So partnerships, um, from an industry and with other financial institutions, but from my perspective public-private sector partnership is— it's imperative. And that's where I do a lot of my work, because certainly for innovation to take place, you're going to need the policymakers on board. You're going to need legislation to support what you're going to— what you're going to be doing. You're going to need robust, cutting-edge regulation. So you need to engage with your regulators regulators. And a lot of this is driven by industry but won't come to fruition unless you have the support of the public sector. And in our case, I would say the innovation that we have experienced with the introduction of the sand dollar— while that was introduced, um, by the Central Bank, certainly for it to be a success, the private sector has to come on board and partner to ensure interoperability, um, with with respect to creating this digital assets hub that's saying global companies make the Bahamas home. The legislative framework, the digital assets legislation, that was something that was initially pushed by industry. Um, we came together, identified the opportunities. We went and spoke with the Central Bank of the Bahamas. We spoke with the Securities Commission, um, and worked together to make sure that we got experts on board to help us to create a framework that would allow for innovation, public-private sector partnerships. I don't think that there are many models like the Bahamas, and so I share it so that people might consider adopting the same approach, because while our regulators are supervisory authorities, they have an open-door policy, um, very accessible, um, to industry, where we actually work together to make these types of things happen. And so if you don't do it today, you want to create great partnerships with the government, with the politicians, and with your supervisory bodies, and let them know what you need for your financial services industry to grow, thrive, and innovate.

Absolutely fantastic. Strategic partnerships and being able to leverage those to continue to, uh, cause, to influence, to affect change is critical. Hubert, I have a special question for you, and that's around business continuity planning. Yeah, so stepping, stepping back, but sort of stepping into it really, and recognizing the pandemic, like I said before, was a catalyst for change. It is not the last of the major influences that we are likely to see coming our way. And from the perspective of business continuity planning, we tend to think of it as just that— business continuity, but not disruptions of a pandemic. We don't know what tomorrow will hold. Talk to us a little bit about the necessity for continuity planning, and not necessarily in a specific box.

Critically important. But having gone through this pandemic, from a risk management perspective, prior to the pandemic, most persons would sit down and they would say, okay, let's look at the universe of risk that could potentially impact our financial services institution or the sector at large. And we would see a pandemic and we would put it way, way, way out there as one of those catastrophic events that if they happen, we are going to be in a lot of, lot of trouble. But it's going to be so minute that it's not likely to happen to us. But we got through COVID-19, I think we got a masterclass of all of what is possible in an environment where you're facing with a catastrophic event. And so as we move forward, this whole idea of business continuity can no longer be limited to the traditional exposures that we think will occur in 1 year or sometimes 2 years or 5 years Because the once-in-a-lifetime issues, the once-in-a-lifetime exposures are happening every other year. So in the Bahamas, for example, it was a big hurricane, a Category 5, then it was the pandemic. Globally now we are looking at Russia fighting Ukraine and we have a significant amount of inflation which is running. And then we have the— now this is geopolitics. Where Biden is now looking at a significant loss come November. And as a result of that, he's telling his Treasury, you better fight inflation. So when we go into these environments of great uncertainty, while they provide us with the ability to innovate and to, in our response, to become better, we have to be mindful that we are running companies, not charities. And the most important aspect of a company is to see how we can continue creating value in perpetuity so that we can increase shareholders' value, we can increase stakeholder value, we can serve the community, we can give due regard to our ESG, we can give due regard to our social corporate responsibility. These are important things, and if you do not have a very seamless and well-thought-out business continuity plan, you're going to run into trouble. I think, you know, as we discussed, or mentioned earlier, many companies responded to the pandemic. Many companies reacted to the pandemic. The difference between the two is the ones who had some preliminary work already in place, and they were able to not just react in the moment, but they had a framework in which to respond. And it's likely that the strategic value that came out of those who had a framework in place, a business continuity plan, and who thought about a little bit of risk beyond the normal, they were in a better position to create value or at least to protect value for their organization.

Okay, fantastic. Thank you so much. Tanya, what about you from that perspective? And while you speak, I'm going to ask that we prepare to load the next poll, because I really want to hear from the audience as well as to whether or not you think you have efficient, effective, ready-to-execute BCP plans in the event of need. But Tanya, over to you.

Well, I think what I'll do, because Hubert covered most of the basis on that point, the only thing I might add is the need for you to continuously review those business continuity plans. In our, in our context in the Bahamas, we found that financial institutions were quite resilient. At the beginning of the pandemic, the Central Bank sent out a questionnaire to all of their members around— all of its licensees— around the impact of the pandemic and how they were able to transition. And the majority of them were able to leverage those business continuity plans, um, resulting in resilience. And when you speak to them, actually they saw increased productivity, um, and in many instances increased profitability as well.

Okay, fantastic. Um, so the poll is up and I would like to get everyone to weigh in a little bit. Does your organization have an active business continuity plan or pandemic plan?. And we've already spoken a little bit to why is such an activity important. The other thing that Tanya just kind of tapered off on was not only is it important to have this documented and in your shelf, on your desk, in your desk somewhere, but to ensure that this is a living document. Very timely discussion, and I will share with you that coming out of our recently concluded CEO event in Miami, this was one of those topics that we discussed. Having a strategic plan, but the execution of. So we'd love to hear from you in terms of whether or not you have one within your organization. But Miriam, in the meantime, while everyone logs in, can you tell us a little bit more about that from your perspective?

Yes, thank you. Yes, so agree with everything that's been said. At Grace Kennedy and First Global Bank, we have a very well-oiled PCP process, I would say. We have an audit every year of the business continuity plan of the various subsidiaries, and we speak about what level we're at. Are we not ready, fairly ready, very ready, you know, stable? There's different groupings, and if you're not in the right grouping, you have to do what it takes to get to the next level. So it's very— it's a very, um, because we're such a global company and we're in so many different businesses, it's a well-oiled machine. But I would I would say is for those of you who are in smaller companies, SMEs, outside of financial services, not just in financial services, part of that risk management thing I was talking about earlier, I think it's really important to prioritize having business continuity planning. And if you want to get outside help to start, in our various countries we have organizations like what Tanya was speaking about, public-private partnerships. We have organizations organizations that provide services to SMEs. It's fine to go and ask for help on the BCP process front. We also have organizations that provide financing to help with capacity building for SMEs. And then once you get that right the first time, I really encourage us to build a process in place to prioritize continuing to do the plan and updating the plan as the environment and context changes.

Fantastic. If I might chime in, I'm Several aspects to it. I mean, financial services is a regulated business, and so your first thing that you need to look at is what is your regulator saying? Um, what is the Securities Commission saying? What is the central bank requiring of you in their guidelines, um, as it relates to business continuity planning? Um, certainly it would involve some sort of impact analysis, um in terms of identifying the different types of risk, um, to business continuity that you might face. We mentioned pandemic and we, we mentioned hurricanes, storms, because that's what we are accustomed to. But there are other types of risks that you need to consider, and you're going to need a recovery strategy. You're going to need to be testing your business continuity plan from time to time You need to train your staff on their roles and responsibilities in the business continuity environment. In fact, there should be a team that's dedicated to this whole notion of the management of business continuity. Critical to it again is communication, um, and there's an increased interdependency between the various, um, departments within your organization. As well. So these are some of the things that you need to consider as you develop your business continuity plan.

Fantastic. I cannot see the results coming up just yet, but hopefully we have the results of that poll. If we do, can we please bring it up so we can all get a sense of where we are? 50/50. 50/50. So that tells us, certainly for all of us on the call today, that we should be able to walk away and say, this is something we need to jump on top of ensuring that we have well in place within our various organizations. We are moving quickly, quickly down to— the countdown is on. And so I want to ensure that we again say a special thank you to our sponsors: Crestcom, Arbinger— I hope I got that correctly pronounced— Framework Consulting, Bahamas Financial Services, the Art House. I am I'm hoping that I'm not missing any others. And if there are any final thoughts from the audience, please, please share with us. Let us know if you think that we met your objectives this afternoon. And I will go back to my panel. Let's get some final thoughts from you as we prepare to wrap up. Let's start with Hubert.

With me? It was certainly a pleasure to be here and being amongst distinguished panel, discussing. In, in researching for this and putting together my thoughts, one of the things I found, uh, uh, uh, an article, and in part it reads, the decade after the great financial crisis was a period of retrenchment in which many banks pulled back from introduction of new products and focused on getting the basics right. With the help of COVID-induced improvisation, banks are fighting back with creativity. At the industrial level, we are seeing collaboration like the one— well, that's foreign, we don't have to read it. At the institutional level, banks are more clear-eyed about when to build, when to buy, and when to partner. And I think, if anything, that's kind of what I would like to leave here. And, and, you know, it was touched on by both Miriam and Tanya before. This innovation space The truth is that in the Caribbean you're going to find institutions which are not large enough and do not have a sufficiently large piggy bank to do the things which are necessary. But through collaboration, through strategic involvement and strategic cooperation, great things can be achieved. The one message that we should not leave here without is the fact that the financial services industry that that we are looking at today is at the crossroad between what was traditional and what is going to be. And so this almost, um, kryptonizing, if you will, blockchain, if you will, of the financial services industry, it is on, the move is on, and everyone needs to at least start getting themselves ready to be part and parcel of that. And if we move through the process that we discussed early about how to innovate and how to manage and create change, I think we'll all be good and we'll all be better for it as a region and as a world financial services world.

Wonderful. Thank you so much. Why don't we go over to you, Tania?

Well, my final word, or my key message, is that innovation is a prerequisite to sustainability. If our financial services industries are going to grow, thrive, transform, then innovation has to be the key. And you want to create an environment or a culture of innovation where all stakeholders are able to share ideas as to how your operations can be improved, um, to meet the objectives of your financial institution. So you want to listen to your, your staff, your people. You want to listen to your customers. You know, the board has to be engaged. Innovation is a prerequisite to sustainability.

Fantastic. That's, that's quite a heavy, um, resonating message as well. Tanya, thank you. Mariam, over to you.

Thank you. Thanks. It's really a pleasure to be here this afternoon. Time went fast. Um, so the thing I would say is that as we exist in the financial services sector, we do our strategic plans every year. The pace of the change is rapidly increasing. And the biggest thing to anchor, as we have all these winds, whether they're headwinds or tailwinds being faced, the thing to anchor us is what is the pain point that is being felt by our customer base right now, and how can we address it or partner with a company like LiftinTech to address it. And so just Picking up on some of the comments in the chat about the pain points around payments for SMEs. If you, if you're an SME sitting in Jamaica and your customer is in the US and they're going to pay you $100 because you do, for example, prophetic consulting, um, by the time you send a wire through your bank and they pulled out $35, that is not sustainable. Even remittances, the amount that's pulled out when you move money across across borders, not going to stay the same. 10 years from now, we look back on this and there'll be a change. So financial services companies need to decide what elements of the change they're going to participate in, because I truly believe that we will be left behind if you are an FX that's just staying the same. The other thing that's coming at us is a lot of regulatory wins between data protection and Basel 3. 3 and all these other things that are coming down the pipe, even how much we're spending on digital and how to account for software as an asset. There's a lot that we have to push on to ensure that our businesses are varying countries, are varying sizes, varying scale. And obviously the bigger players have a leg up, if you will, but all of us have to play and exist and win. So I really believe that If you're financial services, you're going into strategic planning, we need to determine what is the pain point that exists now, and is your strategic plan over the next 12 months and the next 5 years going to address head-on that pain point? And the final thing I'll just say is, you see all these things I have— I've been in conversations where people say, crypto? No, we're not doing that. I don't want to hear about it. They don't understand it. They don't understand the difference between crypto versus blockchain versus to stablecoins, etc. I don't want to do it. I don't think you can exist in the financial services sector without at least understanding the environment around us as it keeps on changing. So if you're not dynamic, I think it's very important to become dynamic because it is one of those sectors that's constantly being disrupted little by little. And as that happens and you look back, you'll start to figure out that customers will start moving and you become less relevant. So that would be my closing comments.

Fantastic, and that is a very, very profound message to leave us with. I just want to tie us up a little bit and take us back to why we sat here in the first place as a panel to discuss leveraging the pandemic and planning for accelerated change in financial services. We ended the conversation this afternoon on BCP, and for those of you who think, you know, business continuity Business continuity planning. Let's just step back a little bit from the business aspect and say that we will redefine BCP to say be continuously prepared. Yeah, and that's going to take care of all of the aspects of business, but it also takes it a little— it makes it a little bit more personal, a little bit more intimate. It's how we live now, or it's how we are all saying, whether or not you're in Trinidad, Antigua, Barbados. I think you're all on the call this afternoon. This afternoon represented the US Bahamas. The point is that we have to live in a state of readiness. What we knew to be a very slow-paced, easygoing, you know, from the Caribbean, man, things nice, that is not so anymore. We are competing on the global scale, and we must exist in a positive mindset and innovative innovation, technology-driven technology-ready mindset if we are to remain constantly redefining the legacy of the Caribbean, the legacy that we are building now. So to all of you who joined us this afternoon, I want to say a huge thank you. To my panelists, thank you so much for giving us the invigorating conversation. I hope no one fell asleep after their heavy lunches, but based on the conversations and comments we saw coming in, I doubt very it much. Danielle, thank you so much for hosting us this afternoon. I hand back over to you. Thank you again, everyone.

Thank you.

Thank you. I see you guys getting some rounds of applause there, so job well done. It says you did something right. All right, uh, is Danielle on? Are we handing over? We have a few more minutes.

You do have a few more— you did have a few more minutes, which was totally excellent. Thank you again to the amazing panelists, the insights and takeaway, I mean, absolutely tremendous. Marion Huber, Tanya, and an amazing moderator with some extremely powerful questions, Wendy Delmar. Thank you so much. I'm also saying again thank you to the Bahamas Financial Services Board for being the sponsor of this afternoon session. Without you, none of this is actually possible. I just want to remind everybody that there is a giveaway. Name 2 presenters of the downloads who are not from the Caribbean. Tell us in the chat in order to win your giveaway. You know, there were so many key points. My, my hand was, you know, typing away. And where we saw where 60% of organizations, if you want to use this as this, you know, Wendy, we saw where 60% of people said that their organizations are in fact having conversations around innovation and change in the Caribbean. To me, that was fantastic. I actually did not expect it to be like that. Rounding up, we had Hubert with some powerful, um, takeaways, you know, major lessons becoming very agile, leadership focused on delivering service where that focus, you know, quality leadership, but the focus is the focus leader is what's important, and managing uncertainty. Um, Tanya, easing those pain points, mitigate by mitigating Resistance. I mean, just, you know, just some really key nuggets. Um, smooth transitions when engaging innovation strategies, creating agile financial institutions. You need to have all critical stakeholders engaged, a multidisciplinary approach. Tanya, absolutely important, and I think often overlooked. And this is how you stay truly agile. And of course, one of my favorite people in the world and favorite business leaders in Jamaica is Mariam, you know, taking us through 3 key themes. We saw where digital transportation— sorry, transformation is upon us, and gave us 3 pitfalls to avoid before diving into digitization, creating a high-level model where we're tracking metrics. So important, actually tracking the work that we're doing. Primary research to be done to drive that transformation. Transformation where the customer is at the center. And I like what Maren said, sometimes, you know, we're there innovating and we're doing all of this stuff and we're forgetting that the customer must be at the center. And of course, combining that with cultural transformation. Um, Tanya went on, and Maren rather, to talk about risk management and how important that is, not giving it the last half an hour of what, um, of, of the strategic planning meeting, but actually making that be a focal point so that innovation— and I quote— can run on the rails of this much more quickly and efficiently. And then of course, innovation is the key driver to financial inclusion. We are— we spent so much time on that, and I see it as a big area of opportunity in our financial sector across the Caribbean. Financial inclusion. So we also went on to talk about readiness with Hubert saying keeping the focus on creating value in perpetuity. How powerful is that? Creating value in perpetuity, not just value for today, but what was important was keeping it, keeping it going, keeping it moving. And of course, an amazing session on the business continuity plan. Thank so much to our panelists. It was truly fantastic to have you. As we transition to our next panel, our energy panel, in a few minutes, we of course all like to thank our sponsors. Without them, none of this is possible. But allow me to also thank our hosts, you know, Dale and Francis from Framework Consulting. They do so much work to bring us all into this space. I learned yesterday that this is the only, perhaps the first, uh, conference this type, um, ever to be held in the Caribbean. So we thank our hosts from Framework Consulting, Crestcom, Arbinger, um, Markrim Salary Trends, the Bahamas Financial Board carrying us through this afternoon, CaribbeanJobs.com, Hensley Fraser, The Business Suite, and Sophia Group Limited. We are just so thankful that you have been on with us. Um, just wanted— oh, I just see where we have two more, um, questions. Um, I saw something, or maybe my screen wasn't moving, that we had some more questions. And maybe our panelists can jump in and, um, answer those. Um, um, Francis, can you give me a heads up because we are running a little bit ahead of time, um, if we— our energy panel is ready to go, um, and, and if anybody just wants to jump in and say what their key takeaway is. I just kind of bombarded you with what my key takeaways were, but you know, if you want to just jump in the chat section.

Question on the stage?

Yeah, I noticed that we have something up and, and let's see if it fits in this afternoon session. Much of this morning's conversation was about the importance of people, leadership, and culture. Can— and Lisa Maria is looking for insights on the impact of Caribbean culture and people on fintech disruption. Uh, so let's see, perhaps we can jump on to Mariam and see if you have some insights there.

Well, I think the one thing I'll just share in terms of what comes to mind, um, Lisa Samarie, I hope I said that right, is that Caribbean culture has a lot to do with when we migrate out of our region to another country, we want to look after our families and send money back. So this whole idea of the remittance movement of money across borders, but it comes at a high cost. That cultural norm in and of itself is going to create fintech disruption. And the remittance companies are very aware of it. So we're moving out ahead of it. We're having our digital strategy in parallel with regular cash-in, cash-out. And if you think about it, the thing that's missing— and someone asked the question for fintechs, what is that cash access infrastructure being built? Most fintechs don't have that. They have to partner for those who want to cash in, cash out, especially the cash— well, you can cash out on ATMs and point-of-sale machines through a card, but how do you load up your account? So I think the remittance businesses are in pole position, but they're also being pole positioned to be disrupted. And that Caribbean cultural norm of just the remittance itself— the Caribbean is a large piece of that global market for the small size we are area-wise— is driving fintech disruption. It's ripe for fintech disruption. So that's the first that comes to mind and one of the biggest cultural norms that's causing in text to disrupt.

Fantastic. Wait, go ahead, Hubert, please jump in very quickly.

You know, in the Caribbean, we want to pull up to a place and see 100 persons in the line and ask for a bly to be the first in the line. Um, if you think about it within that context, fintech is doing exactly that. It has the ability to put you ahead of the line so you can make payment anywhere, anytime, anyhow you choose to be. In Jamaica, we would say, we walk into the place, let's just mash up this place. So it's really about— yes, we have a culture of being laid back. Yes, we have many instances where we have organizations that doesn't have significantly deep pocket, but we are also very trendy and we are moving in tandem with the with the developed world. And so I think that cultural shift has already taken place, and persons are having been exposed to what is out there is really ready and ripe. You know, the fintech— fintech is going to destroy— maybe that's a, that's a tough word, but fintech I think will destroy any traditional financial institution that refused to move. —refuse to get along with what is happening now. It's certainly going to happen because it's a democratization of what is happening. Because if you think about it, in 2022, and certainly in about 5 years from now, it will be technology companies providing financial services, as opposed to financial services companies now that have technology helping them to sell service. So if you do not get into that lane, you're going to be significantly disadvantaged. And I think, I think the Caribbean is ready for that.

Absolutely. And we see that, of course, globally, even in the transportation industry, um, and we've seen it in so many other industries. We did have one more question, um, uh, in the chat from Cecile Watson. Do you think— I think it was addressed a little bit, but do you think the financial services sector in the Caribbean is doing enough to help SMEs in particular? Cecile is always advocating for SMEs, and I love her for it. Um, enough to help SMEs take technology— leverage technology, rather— to serve outside their local markets? Uh, Myriam, you had spoken a little bit to it before, and so I ask you to jump in, and, and then maybe Tanya.

Yeah, I was trying— yeah, I think, um, So there are a couple of things. So in Jamaica, our Ministry of Finance has a grant that SMEs can access to push digital transformation. I think it's either $350,000 or $500,000. Most people don't know about that, but there are those who do. And so there are people in the ecosystem trying to push to help SMEs. We have SME JBD, we have SME companies that are— sorry, public-private company partnerships, we're working to focus on SMEs. And just a quick plug, we have our SME Summit. I know we're here, but First Global Bank's SME Summit is on July 20th. And again, part of that is how do we bring SMEs together to help with capacity building? Because the banking sector in Jamaica has realized that we cannot just wait for SMEs to come to us when they're financing ready, but we have to ensure that we're helping with capacity building. And so, Cecile, one of the things we're realizing is that SMEs, their issue on technology is really around payments and how do we facilitate payments for SMEs, especially with e-commerce. And we had pushed up early on e-commerce, but the COVID pandemic helped us to really accelerate that. So I think more of that will happen. I just think it needs to be twinned with customer awareness communication so that folks are aware of what what exists now, and there's a feedback loop where we're saying, what is it about technology that you want to see even more of? I'm also going to take this feedback— thank you very much for raising it, Cecile— to ensure that we have a module on that at our SME Summit that's coming up on July 20th.

Thank you. Thank you.

And only any quick word? Yeah, only to add in that the approach in the Bahamas is similar. It's public sector driven. Um, the government has invested in creation of a small business development center, um, here in the Bahamas that helps with business planning, helps, um, you to, um, explore avenues for capitalization. And one thing that it also facilitated was the, um, issuance of technical grants designed primarily to— for SMEs to embrace e-commerce. So That's something that's being driven by the Small Business Development Center here in the Bahamas.

Okay, well, thanks again to our amazing panelists. It really, really was an amazing time. I'm so glad I got to, to host this afternoon session here. So, Mariam, Hubert, Tanya, and of course Wendy Del Mar, thank you so much for being with us today. Some very key takeaways, um,