A note from Chief Executive Officer Mark St. Hill
Team: I have thought long and hard about what my first communication to you as your new CEO would look like; you only get one chance to make a first impression, although I think most of you have known me long enough to know that what you see is what you get! I can’t tell you how honoured I am to be given the chance to be your new CEO. I have approached my preparation for this role with much thought and I am certain that one of the things that will make my job easier is you. Over the years I have developed many friendships and productive working relationships and from the level of support you have expressed in the weeks since my appointment was announced, I know I have your best wishes and commitment. Thank you! I’ve recently had the chance to travel to some parts of our region, attending board meetings and meetings with clients and visiting some of you; if you haven’t seen me in this round of visits, don’t worry, I’ll be there soon! My recent travels took me to Jamaica, Trinidad and the Bahamas and I must say I left with so much encouragement and positive energy. It is always amazing to see the pride, energy and commitment to succeed. I am so happy this is the impression I took away as I transition into my new role. I also met with some of our clients and their level of buoyancy and enthusiasm for achieving success in the future was almost overwhelming. I am 100% positive that we have all the elements to reap the success we so richly deserve.
Banking in the Caribbean is undergoing a deep transformation driven by three major forces of change. These three major themes will shape much of CIBC FirstCaribbean's evolution – the opportunities and threats of digitization, the continuing growth of our regional economies and markets and the growing importance of our environmental and other societal responsibilities.
Once we get some critical projects completed: for example, Records Digitization and completion of the sales of our businesses in some of our countries, we will be able to free up a significant amount of time for many of you. A key focus thereafter would be to complete the transformational activities and pivot our attention to growth, to fend off the significant headwinds we are facing.
To adapt well to our changing environment, we are going to have to tweak our approach. SET recently met in Barbados at a strategy review session and we’ve come up with what we are confident is a winning formula for our bank.
I know you have heard about the infamous headwinds before – and believe me they are real! Higher costs for our company is something we have to fight tooth and nail to control, and inflation in the world economy will have a significant impact on our economies, with the potential to reduce economic activity, which of course affects our ability to perform at an optimal level. This is a reality and overcoming it must remain a key priority.
The past two years have been grueling, facing down the pandemic while supporting our clients and maintaining our own enthusiasm have required from everyone in our company a level of perseverance not required in many years. I know you are all feeling stretched as we go through this period of transformation. We are seeing good progress but there is still a little way to go. Our priority is to introduce a series of enablers that will help us to relieve some of the pressure you have been feeling as a result of the changes we have been making, and which you spoke about in our most recent E-voice. Next week, I will tell you more about them and how they will improve your experience at work. I will also explore your other feedback from the survey and open the discussion with you on what we will do to address your concerns.
This is not to say we haven’t made progress in transforming ourselves over the past few years. We have become a more return-driven organization, which is key to our survival. We have transformed ourselves into the kind of digitally enabled bank that is the envy of the financial services landscape in the Caribbean. But we have more work to do, and this was the focus of the meeting of SET at the beginning of October. Whilst we are maintaining our strategic pillars of Relationships, Modern, Simplification and People, as we focus even more on growth, we need to have an even stronger customer focus, to be faster to market, engage and empower and finally be more competitive.
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