Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements - FirstCaribbean ...

Jan-Arne Farstad
Managing Director, Wealth Management
Another Banner Year
The Bank’s Wealth Management team produced another banner year in
2007. Total deposits amounted to $4.7 billion (an increase of 19% from
last year), loans increased to $535 million (up 118%) and additional Assets
under Management or Administration reached $1.5 billion (up 25%). Wealth
Management’s contribution to the Bank’s operating profit reached 25% (up
from 21%).
At the beginning of the year domestic and international Wealth Management
were combined under one roof. Domestic clients with balances of $100,000
or more and/or borrowings of $350,000 or more were transferred from
Retail to Wealth Management in the course of the year. These clients are now
served by dedicated relationship managers and professional support staff to
ensure that personalised service and advice is provided to this valued group
of our clients. Domestic clients are now enjoying the same access to best-inclass
products, services and advice that previously only were available to our
international clientele. When adjusted for the internal client transfers from
Retail, loans grew by 27% and deposits by 1%.
Our seven Wealth Management Centres located in The Bahamas, Barbados,
the British Virgin Islands, Curaçao, the Cayman Islands, Jamaica and Turks &
Caicos Islands were upgraded to improve service levels. Each of these Wealth
Management Centres is now organised in four teams of professionals who
specialise in advisory, transactional, lending and compliance management.
Each of these teams reports to a Wealth Management Director, who ensures
that the four areas cooperate seamlessly to serve our Wealth Management
clients. Some 225 professionals serve our Wealth Management clients across
these islands. All seven Wealth Management Centres performed well with
financial results ahead of 2006.
Wealth Management
We made good progress during the year in our specialty areas, such as
banking services for Captive Insurers and Fund Managers. Our Investment
Management practice was substantially improved by the addition of a
number of highly qualified investment advisors. Our International mortgage
offering again grew very substantially. Several enhancements to our Internet
Banking platform were made that have increased the ease with which our
clients can manage their monies.
Our Curaçao bank (acquired from ABN AMRO in 2006) now serves as
centralised hub for execution of investment solutions for clients across all seven
Wealth Management Centres and has performed exceptionally well despite
going through a complete system conversion in 2007 from ABN AMRO’s
system platform to a new state-of-the-art wealth management platform of its
own. We thank our clients for their patience during this conversion process
which is now thankfully behind us. The financial performance of Curaçao has
been exceptionally good, in particular when considering this disruption.
We believe the combination of domestic and international Wealth
Management provides good growth opportunities as we seek to be trusted
advisors to our clients who reward us with a larger “share of their wallet”
based on sound financial advice, best available open architecture investment
products and the professionalism of our highly rated relationship managers.
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