‘Not Republic BANK!’

Not us!

This is the message coming from Republic Bank Barbados Managing Director Anthony Clerk, as he cleared the air amidst allegations that local banks are unwilling to grant small businesses loans.

With much criticism circulating in recent times as many small enterprise owners cry foul when it comes to securing much-needed start up capital, Clerk said that is not the case at his
institution.

Speaking on the sidelines of a tree-planting ceremony held in Church Village Green on Wednesday to honour former Chairman of Republic Financial Holdings Ltd. Ronald Harford, Clerk defended Republic Bank when asked the burning question.

In recent times, many small business owners and entrepreneurs have taken to all traditional and non-traditional platforms to bemoan the lack of funding for their projects, with local banks taking the flak. The issue has been making its way to the top as Minister of Small Business, Entrepreneurship and Commerce Dwight Sutherland recently highlighted the plight and called for the return of a Barbadian-owned bank during the anniversary service of a local credit union.

Clerk, who said that he has heard the criticism and the talk of turning down applications, said that is not the situation at Republic.

“I think it’s a fallacy, at least for Republic Bank, that a whole lot of applications are being made by small businesses and are being turned down. That is not the case! We in fact are not receiving a lot of applications. If we do, we judge each one on its own merit. We try to assist the people we think have a good idea and have a shot because the truth is that small business start-ups have a very high failure rate – well over 50%. So it is an area we have to be cautious with. We owe a duty-to-care to our depositors, to our shareholders, but we do not turn away
any good opportunities,” he said.

Going on to mention that loan demand is flat due to the state of the economy, Clerk said that he hopes that many of the touted development projects for this year will come on stream to generate loan demand.

He added that instead of spurning small business owners, the financial institution had in fact hosted courses at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill School of Business for entrepreneurs and small commercial customers to arm them with the competencies needed to run a business.

“Because of Mr. Harford’s own pioneering spirit, we have maintained our commitment to working with this country’s builders, creatives, innovators and entrepreneurs to secure tangible results for their efforts. Through innovations such as our six-week business programme for our commercial clients and our SME toolkit, we have committed to journeying with Barbadians, providing them with business insights, materials, documents and tools that can help their small and medium sized enterprises flourish,” he said.

With 2019 behind them, Clerk said that the bank’s performance in 2020 is looking good. “We did not have the best of years in terms of the absolute bottom line – which is the profit after tax – because we had a one-off write-down of a deferred tax asset as a result of the reduction of the corporation tax rates. But above that line, the bank performed well ahead of targets. Core operations remain profitable and sound. In 2020 we will not have that circumstance repeating itself so in 2020 – this fiscal – we expect to have a very good year both above the tax line and below the tax line. And so far for the first quarter we are more or less on spot.” (MP)