By Carlena Knight
The Caribbean Union Bank (CUB) is stepping forward to show appreciation to the country’s essential workers during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The institution will be rolling out an initiative dubbed “Let’s Talk”, which offers various savings and loans payments to support essential workers.
Yesterday, CUB’s Manager of Retail and Commercial Banking, Ragi Burton explained how the programme came about.
“In appreciation of their hard work and efforts of the essential workers during this very stressful time we at CUB wanted o give back by saying ‘thank you’ to the essential workers by offering bank-wide specials to them — whether it’s preferred interest rates on savings accounts, reduced interest rates on loans and negotiation fees and much more, so what we are saying is that essential workers, let’s talk we want to help,” Burton said on Observer AM.
One of those initiatives is the ‘dollar a day’ savings programme, for which Business Development Associate Esron Gittens provided some details on this venture.
“We figured that we will be able to encourage persons to save, so what CUB has said is that ‘listen, you can as save … starting with just one dollar a day for a month you will end up with $30 dollars, but what CUB has gone ahead and done is that we are willing to give a jump start. We are contributing as much as $50 to start that account and therefore at the end of it as long as you maintain the discipline, we are going to give you something extra on the end.”
Premium saver is another component Gittens revealed that the bank will be offering. This component encourages individuals to save big in the hopes of acquiring land, car, or house.
Although the initiative is geared towards essential workers, Burton revealed that it will still cover all individuals. He revealed there are no set requirements for these loans but instead conversations will be held to fully access the best loans for individuals.
“We thought about the fact that most of the individuals that we would interact with given these times would not sit in that usual box of requirements. We are trying to say that we understand the situation that is happening at this time and we have to look outside of that box and just look at the bigger picture. We will look at the previous history to see how they are performing pre and post Covid and see how best we can assist them. We call ourselves relationship bankers, we really want to sit down and go from there,” Burton said.
CUB will now also be hosting virtual consultations with customers.