WITH THE TECHNOLOGICAL INTEGRATION of Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) Ltd and RBTT Barbados Ltd completed, attention has now shifted to harmonizing compensation, benefits and processes.
Horace Cobham, president and country head of the two organizations, said the ultimate goal was a seamless merger that did not adversely impact customers and he stressed that speed was not a consideration.
“We’ve been extremely deliberate in the integration process. We are not driven by how quickly we can get it done,” he said during an interview with BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY in his Broad Street, Bridgetown office.
He said while the technology conversion was limited to Barbados, branding and the harmonization of compensation and benefits were regional in scope and all the territories “have to be slotted into some kind of pecking order”.
“The reality is that you really cannot achieve full integration until all those pieces are put together and functioning seamlessly,” Cobham noted.
He said RBC would be focused on integration for the rest of the year but acknowledged that “anytime you remain stagnant, you become irrelevant over time”. Therefore, he said, “between April and May” RBC will be rolling out “a market leading product” that will interest both personal and business customers.
Cobham said when the integration process was complete, customers would benefit from more branches and automatic banking machines, a greater variety of products and “improved technology that will allow them to do more things”.
“Once we’ve completed the regional integration, we will begin to build on the current financial strength that exists with RBC and RBTT combined being one of the largest financial institutions in the region,” he said.
