As financial institutions continue to grapple with the downturn in the economy, experts believe the only way to progress is through innovative and bold moves to stimulate the market and attract clients.
Heeding government’s call for new and emerging entrepreneurs to lead the diversification thrust, Republic Bank’s Marketing Manager, Damian Cooper revealed that the Bank had started consulting entrepreneurs to find out where they needed assistance.
Speaking at the launch of the Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) which will run from November 13 to 19, Cooper yesterday said, “We have recognised and started conversations with some of the entrepreneurs to find out more about what are some of the things they would need to help them to achieve their goals.”
He said the Bank needed to ascertain exactly what entrepreneurs needed in order to better serve them.
GEW is the world’s largest celebration of innovators and job creators who launch start-ups and bring ideas to life and drive economic growth.
As one of five sponsors this year, Cooper said Republic was committed to having, “Conversations with these entrepreneurs because we may have to tweak our model a bit in terms of how we go about assessing entrepreneurs and how we got about supporting them.”
He said exciting and interesting times were ahead as they had engaged a particular NGO to guide them through the process to understand entrepreneurs better.
Cooper added, “The fields are wide and diverse and our traditional model of looking at cash flows on a monthly basis and expecting income at every juncture, is possibly not the best model to use in this time.”
He said, “Income to a lot of entrepreneurs is inconsistent and they come at different times and it flows differently so the Bank has made a concerted effort to understand entrepreneurs more and we will be partnering with a lot more entrepreneurs and NGO’s to see how we can change the landscape and really make entrepreneurs game changers.”
GEW is celebrated in more than 170 countries.
Hosted by Youth Business T&T (YBTT) for the past seven years, the GEW provides training, mentorship and funding for entrepreneurs.
Officials said the current state of the economy indicated a large percentage of persons both under and over the age of 35, were either unemployed or under-employed.
The GEW 2017 sponsors include Shell, TSTT/Blink B-Mobile, T&T Unit Trust Corporation, Republic Bank Ltd and Massy Foundation.