DaviesThe island's commercial banks are being urged to voluntarily lower the seven working days they currently take to clear local cheques drawn on other banks' accounts or face the possibility of having the Government introduce legislation to force them to do so.
Finance and Planning Minister Dr. Omar Davies said he was not yet talking about legislation, but has urged bankers to examine what he said was a pet peeve.
"It's unacceptable and we have to work on that," Dr. Davies told a group of business people attending a Citibank Citiservice presentation at the Terra Nova Hotel, St. Andrew on Tuesday this week.
He said the Bank of Jamaica (BoJ) has shown him a new system which would reduce the clearance of cheques to five working days. However, he said "that is still too long. I just want to tell you all that I an not satisfied with that."
According to Dr. Davies, within the State of Florida in the United States, the norm was for local cheques to be cleared in three working days "and they are a lot bigger than Jamaica."
Referring to a statement he used in his budget debate that Jamaica's institutions must become "world class or no class at all", the Minister said a reduction of the time to clear cheques was one area in which he was seeking the banks' voluntary collaboration, and that customers who were dissatisfied with the present system would also have to make demands in that regard.
Against the background of a presentation that showed improvements in Citibank's customer service over a given period, Dr. Davies also urged Peter Moses, country officer for Citibank in Jamaica, and his team at Citiservice, to compare their results against the best in the world and benchmark themselves against those, rather than comparing against where the bank was in the past.
"It's an approach I would like to commend to all CEOs, all leaders within this gathering, not in an esoteric way, but the reality is that unless each firm does that they simply are not going to survive in the new era," he said.
He said they were not going to survive because the days were gone when the Ministry of Finance or the Ministry of Industry and Commerce would offer them protection from competition by fiat.
"And increasingly, it doesn't matter whether you are competing in the domestic market or externally," said the Minister. "The bar is being raised and unless you can clear the new heights then you are going to be out of that competition. And this attempt to benchmark, this attempt to measure reactions even amongst your employees, are commendable because that's the way to go," he added, specifically referring to Citibank's Citiservice.
Citiservice is an integrated customer inquiry line for after sales service that provides easy access to accurate answers in the shortest possible time. It was established more than three years ago as part of the bank's world-wide strategy to improve the service quality towards customer satisfaction. Citiservice facilitates consultations on most products offered by the bank and is governed by standards under which it is committed to offering a resolution within a pre-determined time frame. It is located on the mezzanine of Citibank's New Kingston branch and will be opened to all its customers during the last two weeks in October.
Dr. Davies also used the opportunity to again defend the Government's intervention in the financial sector through the Financial Sector Adjustment Company (FINSAC), noting that he would have no hesitation in doing so again."
