The land­scape of T&T’s bank­ing sec­tor be­tween June 2024 and June 2025 re­veals a strate­gic en­trench­ment of fee-based rev­enue mod­els, as eight of the na­tion’s pri­ma­ry com­mer­cial in­sti­tu­tions—ANSA Bank Lim­it­ed, CIBC Caribbean Bank, Citibank, First Cit­i­zens Bank, JMMB Bank, RBC Roy­al Bank, Re­pub­lic Bank, and Sco­tia­bank—nav­i­gat­ed a pe­ri­od of sig­nif­i­cant op­er­a­tional tran­si­tion.

Da­ta re­leased by the Cen­tral Bank re­veals that the eight ma­jor com­mer­cial banks have large­ly main­tained their pric­ing mod­els, sig­nalling a uni­fied strate­gic ap­proach to rev­enue gen­er­a­tion and cus­tomer be­hav­iour man­age­ment.

This lack of volatil­i­ty sug­gests that banks have suc­cess­ful­ly cal­i­brat­ed their fees to off­set op­er­a­tional over­heads while ag­gres­sive­ly steer­ing the pub­lic to­ward dig­i­tal al­ter­na­tives.

By ex­am­in­ing every cat­e­go­ry from per­son­al sav­ings thresh­olds to busi­ness main­te­nance costs, it be­comes ev­i­dent that the cost of tra­di­tion­al bank­ing has be­come a fixed eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ty for the lo­cal pop­u­la­tion.

Across the per­son­al bank­ing sec­tor, the “min­i­mum bal­ance thresh­old” re­mains a pri­ma­ry in­stru­ment for seg­men­ta­tion.

In both 2024 and 2025, Sco­tia­bank and JMMB Bank main­tained the high­est re­quire­ments, man­dat­ing a $1,000 bal­ance to avoid penal­ties.

The penal­ties as­so­ci­at­ed with fail­ing to main­tain a re­quired ac­count bal­ance are ex­plic­it­ly cat­e­gorised un­der the “per­son­al” bank­ing sec­tion as the min­i­mum bal­ance vi­o­la­tion fee.

For Sco­tia­bank T&T, this en­tails a strict $1,000 min­i­mum bal­ance thresh­old that, if breached, trig­gers a $12 fee on a month­ly ba­sis, a struc­ture that re­mained un­changed from 2024 through 2025.

JMMB Bank T&T utilis­es the same $1,000 thresh­old, but its cat­e­gori­sa­tion of the penal­ty evolved; in 2024, the doc­u­ment pri­mar­i­ly list­ed the con­se­quence as “no in­ter­est earned,” where­as the 2025 there was a dash in that cat­e­go­ry.

Con­verse­ly, First Cit­i­zens and RBC Roy­al Bank held firm at a $100 thresh­old, pro­vid­ing a low­er bar­ri­er for en­try that re­mained un­changed year-over-year.

Re­pub­lic Bank, which list­ed a vari­able range in 2024, clar­i­fied its 2025 po­si­tion with a thresh­old be­tween $100 and $500, pe­nal­is­ing vi­o­la­tors by with­hold­ing in­ter­est.

CIBC Caribbean re­mained one of the most ac­ces­si­ble op­tions, keep­ing its min­i­mum bal­ance at a mod­est $10 through­out the com­par­i­son pe­ri­od.

Main­te­nance fees for per­son­al ac­counts have shown iden­ti­cal sta­bil­i­ty. Through­out 2024 and in­to 2025 RBC and Re­pub­lic Bank en­forced a stan­dard $15 month­ly fee.

ANSA Bank con­tin­ued to dis­tin­guish it­self by of­fer­ing no min­i­mum bal­ance re­quire­ments and omit­ting a spe­cif­ic month­ly main­te­nance fee in its re­port­ing, a strat­e­gy it main­tained through 2025.

This con­sis­ten­cy across the board in­di­cates a sec­tor-wide agree­ment on the base­line cost of main­tain­ing a per­son­al sav­ings pro­file.

The push to re­duce in-branch traf­fic is most vis­i­ble in the “teller trans­ac­tion fees.”

RBC Roy­al Bank main­tained the high­est hur­dle, charg­ing $12 for both de­posits and with­drawals at the counter in both 2024 and 2025. Sco­tia­bank’s pol­i­cy al­so re­mained sta­t­ic, pro­vid­ing on­ly one free in-branch trans­ac­tion per month (de­posit or with­draw­al) be­fore a $10 fee is ap­plied.

While Re­pub­lic Bank and First Cit­i­zens con­tin­ue to of­fer free in-branch de­posits to en­cour­age liq­uid­i­ty, their with­draw­al fees of $3 and $5 re­spec­tive­ly have not budged over the twelve-month pe­ri­od.

CIBC Caribbean re­mains the most eco­nom­i­cal for branch users, keep­ing its with­draw­al fee at $1.50 across 2024 and 2025.

In­ac­tive or “dor­mant” ac­counts con­tin­ue to face sig­nif­i­cant penal­ties that saw no re­duc­tion in the 2025 sched­ule.

JMMB Bank’s $50 an­nu­al fee re­mains the steep­est in the mar­ket.

Sco­tia­bank per­sists with its $25 charge for the first two years, fol­lowed by a re­cur­ring fee every two years there­after.

The busi­ness bank­ing land­scape re­veals even more spe­cialised mod­els, with Sco­tia­bank T&T of­fer­ing the most unique struc­ture for high-vol­ume clients.

In the 2024 and 2025 doc­u­ments, Sco­tia­bank is ex­plic­it­ly list­ed as grant­i­ng 99 free en­tries for every $50,000 cred­it of bal­ance for both in-branch de­posits and with­drawals.

Re­pub­lic Bank does not list this spe­cif­ic en­try-based mod­el.

Cred­it cards

The “com­par­a­tive sched­ule of fees and charges” for com­mer­cial banks as of June 30, 2024, and June 30, 2025, re­veals a com­plex land­scape of cred­it card costs, cat­e­goris­ing fees in­to Visa and Mas­ter­card seg­ments, fur­ther break­ing them down in­to main­te­nance, cash ad­vances, late pay­ments, over-lim­it penal­ties, and ad­min­is­tra­tive charges like state­ment re­quests and card re­place­ments.

One of the most vis­i­ble ar­eas of com­pe­ti­tion and cost for con­sumers is the an­nu­al main­te­nance or mem­ber­ship fee for VISA and Mas­ter­card prod­ucts:

• As of June 2024, CIBC Caribbean set its plat­inum card fee at $600 and its busi­ness card at $500 for VISA;

• First Cit­i­zens dis­played a wide range dur­ing this pe­ri­od, with fees start­ing at $75 and climb­ing to $1,000; and

• RBC Roy­al Bank main­tained a range be­tween $165 and $750 while Sco­tia­bank’s main­te­nance/mem­ber­ship fee stood at $625.

The cost of im­me­di­ate liq­uid­i­ty through cash ad­vances re­mains high across the board.

In 2024, CIBC Caribbean, First Cit­i­zens, and RBC Roy­al Bank all utilised a three per cent bench­mark for cash ad­vances.

Re­pub­lic Bank and Sco­tia­bank both ap­plied a slight­ly high­er rate of 3.20 per cent for these trans­ac­tions. Sco­tia­bank con­sis­tent­ly en­forced a $50 min­i­mum for cash ad­vances across both years, while Re­pub­lic Bank’s min­i­mum was set at US$5 or TT$25.

Penal­ty fees, ap­plied when card­hold­ers miss pay­ments or ex­ceed their cred­it lim­its, saw no­table shifts to­ward stan­dard­i­s­a­tion at some in­sti­tu­tions.

In 2024, Sco­tia­bank utilised a three per cent cal­cu­la­tion for late pay­ments with a $100 min­i­mum.

By June 2025, the bank moved to flat fees, charg­ing $100 for late VISA pay­ments and $100 for Mas­ter­card late pay­ments.

First Cit­i­zens, Re­pub­lic Bank, and Sco­tia­bank pro­vid­ed rou­tine month­ly state­ments free of charge through­out both pe­ri­ods.

Elec­tron­ic pay­ment costs

Across both years, Sco­tia­bank and ANSA Bank main­tained broad­ly con­sumer-friend­ly struc­tures for ba­sic on-us ATM ser­vices, with free bal­ance en­quiries and with­drawals at their own ma­chines.

This con­trasts with RBC Roy­al Bank, Re­pub­lic Bank, and JMMB Bank, which con­tin­ued to charge for cer­tain ap­proved or de­clined ATM with­drawals, es­pe­cial­ly on off-us LINX trans­ac­tions, of­ten at rates of TT$4 per with­draw­al.

Point-of-sale deb­it card us­age al­so re­vealed no­table vari­a­tion.

While Sco­tia­bank, ANSA Bank and Re­pub­lic Bank typ­i­cal­ly charged no fee for ap­proved lo­cal deb­it card trans­ac­tions, First Cit­i­zens and JMMB Bank levied per trans­ac­tion charges, reach­ing as high as $0.75 to $4.00 de­pend­ing on out­come and ac­count type.

Dig­i­tal bank­ing ser­vices re­main one of the clear­est fault lines. Most banks—in­clud­ing Sco­tia­bank, First Cit­i­zens, RBC, Re­pub­lic Bank and CIBC Caribbean—of­fered free in­ter­net bank­ing and util­i­ty pay­ments in both pe­ri­ods. How­ev­er, Citibank T&T stood apart in 2024 by charg­ing a month­ly in­ter­net bank­ing fee of TT$200, re­in­forc­ing its niche fo­cus on cor­po­rate and high net worth clients rather than mass re­tail users.

Fees ac­count for 15.4 per cent of RFHL’s rev­enue

Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL), which paused an at­tempt to in­crease fees in T&T last Thurs­day be­cause of the neg­a­tive re­ac­tion, col­lect­ed $1.35 bil­lion in fees and com­mis­sion in­come in its fi­nan­cial year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025.

The fees and com­mis­sions, which were col­lect­ed from the 16 ter­ri­to­ries the re­gion’s largest fi­nan­cial group op­er­ates in, con­sti­tute 15.4 per cent of its rev­enue, ac­cord­ing to the com­mer­cial bank’s 2025 an­nu­al re­port.

The group’s in­come com­pris­es net in­ter­est in­come and oth­er in­come. Net in­ter­est in­come is the dif­fer­ence be­tween the in­ter­est a bank earns on its as­sets (most­ly loans/ad­vances) and the in­ter­est it pays on its li­a­bil­i­ties (main­ly de­posits).

Oth­er in­come com­pris­es net fees and com­mis­sion, net ex­change trad­ing in­come, loss­es or gains from the dis­pos­al of as­sets and oth­er op­er­at­ing in­come

RFHL col­lect­ed $5.46 bil­lion in net in­ter­est in­come and $2.25 bil­lion in to­tal oth­er in­come. Some 52.6 per cent of the group’s oth­er in­come comes from T&T, while 46.4 per cent of its net in­ter­est in­come comes from this coun­try.