The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

THE Bahamas Financial Services Union (BFSU) does not foresee any redundancies at CIBC FirstCaribbean International Bank (Bahamas) before September 30, its president expressing concern over the outsourcing of decision-making authority in the commercial banking industry.

Theresa Mortimer told Tribune Business that the union was “taking in stride” the bank’s recently-announced $174 million net loss, having been forewarned. She also, though, expressed concern that the banking industry’s outsourcing trends would result in confidential information on Bahamian clients being stored overseas.

While CIBC FirstCaribbean confirmed plans to cut 66 jobs from its Bahamian workforce in February, and outsource the majority to Jamaica, Ms Mortimer said that to-date no employees had been made redundant. A small number, though, have accepted voluntary separation packages.

“We are still at the table talking. We haven’t had any job losses as yet. We’re still talking on ways and means by which we can keep jobs. No one has gone home through redundancy as yet. The only persons we have going so far are those who wanted to go,” said Ms Mortimer.

The BFSU head said the first round of redundancies should have taken place on Friday. “From what we have been discussing, I don’t see anyone leaving before September 30 and that’s at CIBC, where we have a union in place,” Ms Mortimer said.

“We are in discussions. They announced that some 50-plus jobs would be moving. No one has gone yet or gotten a letter yet. We’re still in discussions and until those are finished I won’t know who is in the number, because we are still letting people go who want to go, those who are near retirement age and they want to go.”

A joint letter from the bank’s Barbados-based group chief executive, Rik Parkhill, and Bahamian managing director, Marie Rodland-Allen, in February informed employees that despite the bank’s voluntary separation package offered last October, it “must move to an involuntary redundancy phase to achieve the desired operational effectiveness targets”.

The majority of terminated jobs to be were said to be in CIBC FirstCaribbean’s operations group, with 56 staff to be made redundant. Ten redundancies are expected elsewhere in the Bahamian operation. The banks said that it would outsource those posts to Jamaica.

Ms Mortimer, meanwhile, said she was concerned that client information was leaving the country. She explained: “I’m concerned that client’s information is leaving this country. No one knows better than the persons right here what can happen and what you are capable of.

“If someone says Theresa Mortimer, you could say I know her, I know what she is capable of. Someone in Barbados, for example, doesn’t know the name ‘ Theresa Mortimer’. They don’t know what she can do, were she lives or anything about her. How can they give a true image? It comes back to the Government giving them approval. They didn’t just get up and take the information out; they had approval to do it.”

CIBC FirstCaribbean last week announced it recorded a net loss of $174 million in the Bahamas for the six months ended April 30, 2014. Its second quarter results were affected by $115 million in goodwill impairment and $75 million in general loan loss provisions.

“They did tell us about their loss. We’re just taking it in stride. We are in recession mode, clearly, with all these job losses. We’re simply watching it,” said Ms Mortimer. “The country is in a recession. When there was no recession, there was a profit and a big profit. There was no cry then.”