Consultant urges a greater emphasis on leaving paper trail behind

A financial consultant believes that Barbados’ approach to doing business is about 20 years behind where it should be.

And Colin Daniel suggests businesses on the island need to move away from their heavy dependence on paper and fully embrace the move towards digitization.

Daniel, the principal consultant with Strategic Consulting and Advisory Services, made the comments this morning while speaking at the Domestic Financial Institutions Conference under the theme: Technology and Customer Service in the Financial Sector.

The event was hosted by the Central Bank of Barbados.

“What has been a challenge in this environment has been still the reliance on paper. We are still managing paper…We need to get to a point where the bulk of paper that is handled to do a remote transaction is not the same level that we have to do when we do an in person transaction. That is where I would like to see us transition to – a truly digital approach to doing business.

“We need to move the whole country forward in terms of digitalization. It is pointless to have a financial institution saying we will accept this and then you still have a situation where attorneys for instance are saying they still need to see original documents. We have to move everyone into the digital space at the same pace. We have to change the culture and we also have to keep the technology fresh and up-to-date to where it is in the source market of our traditional Canadian banks, so being 20 years late to the market. It’s fantastic we are there but we should not be 20 years late,” Daniel said.

He lauded Government for its willingness to embrace technology and move towards digitizing the economy.

However, while Deputy Chief Information Officer at CIBC FirstCaribbean, George Thomas acknowledged that Barbados had been slow in making the transition, he said there had been some benefits in doing so.

He said it had afforded Barbados the opportunity to shape its system after other international countries that had garnered success.

“In terms of being behind in the West and Asia and so on, let’s take a positivist look at this. What we are able to do is look at a wide range of used cases of the use of technology. We have Estonia, we have Sweden, we have the UK, China, Singapore, the UAE, the US and Canada, and we have a buffet of choices,” Thomas explained.

“Now because we have been behind, we can now cherry pick what works for our society, our culture and then be very intentional…We can be a lot more structured, planned and intentional about our digitalization.”

Chief Executive Officer at SigniaGlobe Financial, Paul Ashby, said there was a need for uniformed regulatory practices in Barbados.

He said in too many instances practices varied from business to business.

“I think we have to have a standard platform on the understanding of deregulation because we have a number of regulators in the space and they all come at you with different requests and different understandings. Sometimes it’s legislation or regulation versus practice or versus what people who have been in the system for a long time believe it ought to be. If we had a standard platform of agreement we would be better off.

“We will have all the technology in the world but I believe that our regulatory practices and some of our processes we will need to bring up to speed as well so that we can be as effective as possible,” Ashby said. (randybennett@barbadostoday.bb)