For­eign ex­change short­ages, ris­ing cy­ber fraud, and the re­al­i­ty that thou­sands re­main out­side the for­mal bank­ing sys­tem are now at the cen­tre of the Bankers’ As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (BATT) agen­da, as ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Ke­ston How­ell sig­nals a more ag­gres­sive push to re­shape how the sec­tor en­gages the pub­lic.

In a one-on-one in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian on Tues­day, How­ell, who is five months in­to the po­si­tion, placed the for­eign ex­change crunch at the top of the na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion, while mak­ing it clear that banks are not the source of the prob­lem but re­main un­der pres­sure to ex­plain and man­age it bet­ter.

“The forex is a very sen­si­tive is­sue. Clear­ly, it’s top­i­cal. It’s a com­plex is­sue, and the macro­eco­nom­ic is­sues are be­yond what BATT is geared to deal with. From our per­spec­tive, we’ve tried to work with the var­i­ous stake­hold­ers, so we con­tin­ue to have con­sul­ta­tions with the Cen­tral Bank in terms of what ought to be done. Banks don’t sup­ply for­eign ex­change. Banks are re­al­ly a con­duit for where that sup­ply comes in, and then we dis­trib­ute it. Ul­ti­mate­ly, if peo­ple un­der­stand how the sys­tem works, we’re hope­ful that there will be a less emo­tion­al re­sponse to what is hap­pen­ing and that we can deal with the is­sue in a pret­ty con­struc­tive man­ner,” How­ell said.

That ex­pla­na­tion comes as busi­ness­es, small traders, and or­di­nary cit­i­zens con­tin­ue to strug­gle to ac­cess US dol­lars, af­fect­ing every­thing from im­port­ing goods to pay­ing for on­line ser­vices. How­ell ac­knowl­edged that mis­trust has grown in the ab­sence of clear in­for­ma­tion and con­firmed that BATT is work­ing to ad­dress that gap.

“We’re cur­rent­ly work­ing on a doc­u­ment in terms of how the for­eign ex­change mar­ket works, so that peo­ple un­der­stand how it works. Be­cause some­times a lot of the ac­cu­sa­tions are based on ig­no­rance in terms of how the mar­ket works as op­posed to tru­ly un­der­stand­ing it,” How­ell ex­plained.

Trust, ser­vice break­downs

Pub­lic frus­tra­tion with banks is not lim­it­ed to forex. Com­plaints about long wait times, unan­swered calls, and in­con­sis­tent cus­tomer ser­vice have be­come in­creas­ing­ly vis­i­ble, es­pe­cial­ly on so­cial me­dia, where cus­tomers re­port wait­ing ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods just to reach an agent.

How­ell ad­mit­ted those con­cerns are valid, but point­ed to the struc­tur­al lim­its of what an as­so­ci­a­tion can en­force across in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tions.

“We can see the is­sue be­cause it was one of the things that we picked up in terms of the is­sues raised by the pub­lic.

BATT is in the process of de­vel­op­ing what we would call a cus­tomer char­ter. A cus­tomer char­ter will clear­ly in­di­cate the key ar­eas banks should ad­dress when deal­ing with cus­tomers. Re­sponse time would be one of those. The chal­lenge with an as­so­ci­a­tion is that, even though we de­vel­op the char­ter and banks sign on to the char­ter, the ques­tion is: how do you achieve en­force­ment? Be­cause you can’t. There’s noth­ing puni­tive I have that I could do to them,” How­ell said.

In­stead, the strat­e­gy will re­ly on pub­lic ac­count­abil­i­ty and rep­u­ta­tion­al pres­sure to push banks to meet agreed stan­dards.

“What we need to do is en­cour­age the lead­er­ship based on how, when we out­put those char­ters to fil­ter that down to the or­gan­i­sa­tion and to do mes­sag­ing in a very pub­lic way that forces the mem­bers to be true to what you’ve pub­licly com­mit­ted. If you’re not, then quite frankly, the pub­lic should hold you ac­count­able for not do­ing that,” How­ell said.

That ap­proach forms part of a broad­er ef­fort to repo­si­tion BATT as a proac­tive voice in the fi­nan­cial sec­tor, one that leads dis­cus­sions rather than re­act­ing to crises.

Bank­ing fees

How­ell pushed back against claims that banks are sim­ply over­charg­ing cus­tomers, ar­gu­ing that main­tain­ing prof­itabil­i­ty is crit­i­cal to the sta­bil­i­ty of the fi­nan­cial sys­tem.

“I would chal­lenge the premise that banks are over­charg­ing in the first in­stance. Banks, like most com­mer­cial in­sti­tu­tions, are re­quired to sat­is­fy many stake­hold­ers. Share­hold­ers would be one. Giv­en the com­mit­ment to es­tab­lish­ing the in­fra­struc­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly the pay­ments in­fra­struc­ture, not to men­tion the bricks and mor­tar in terms of just the banks, that is not cheap. And there­fore they have to find av­enues to make sure that they are com­mer­cial­ly vi­able,” How­ell said.

But he ac­knowl­edged that af­ford­abil­i­ty and ac­cess re­main re­al is­sues, par­tic­u­lar­ly for low-in­come in­di­vid­u­als and those still out­side the bank­ing sys­tem.

“For the av­er­age low-in­come earn­er, the banks have es­tab­lished what we call ba­sic bank ac­counts, which fa­cil­i­tate those cus­tomers. The ma­jor­i­ty of banks that of­fer ba­sic bank ac­counts, those ac­counts have no fees. They were de­signed par­tic­u­lar­ly with the whole theme of fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion in mind to en­sure that per­sons could open those ac­counts,” How­ell said.

Those ac­counts, in­tro­duced in 2021, are de­signed to bring un­banked and un­der­banked cit­i­zens in­to the fi­nan­cial sys­tem, of­fer­ing sim­pli­fied re­quire­ments, no fees, and ac­cess to dig­i­tal bank­ing tools. Yet aware­ness re­mains low.

“I think I would put up my hand and plead guilty that we need to do more work in terms of let­ting the pub­lic know that these ac­counts ex­ist so that they could go out and open it be­cause it re­al­ly of­fers the op­por­tu­ni­ty,” How­ell men­tioned.

How­ell said in­clu­sion must al­so ex­tend be­yond tra­di­tion­al bank­ing cus­tomers to reach mi­grant com­mu­ni­ties, in­for­mal work­ers, and those op­er­at­ing large­ly in cash-based en­vi­ron­ments. Out­reach ini­tia­tives in ar­eas such as Ce­dros are part of that ef­fort, aimed at in­te­grat­ing more peo­ple in­to the for­mal fi­nan­cial sys­tem and re­duc­ing re­liance on cash trans­ac­tions.

Cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty is­sues

As banks ex­pand dig­i­tal ser­vices, cy­ber threats are in­creas­ing, rais­ing con­cerns about whether enough is be­ing done to pro­tect cus­tomers. How­ell main­tained that in­sti­tu­tions are in­vest­ing heav­i­ly in se­cu­ri­ty in­fra­struc­ture but warned that tech­nol­o­gy alone is not enough.

“The sim­ple an­swer to that is yes. I think most of the banks have very ro­bust cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty prac­tices as well as mech­a­nisms in place to pro­tect against that,” How­ell stat­ed.

He iden­ti­fied user be­hav­iour as the pri­ma­ry vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, not­ing that most fraud cas­es stem from a lack of aware­ness rather than sys­tem fail­ure.

“I would say 80 to 90 per cent of the cas­es we see are in­vari­ably be­cause users have done things that they ought not to do, not be­cause they want­ed to, but just aren’t aware. If we do a bet­ter job in terms of get­ting peo­ple to be more cir­cum­spect in terms of how they be­have when they’re on­line, hope­ful­ly we could be­gin to ad­dress that prob­lem,” How­ell said.

To tack­le this, BATT is ex­pand­ing pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion cam­paigns fo­cused on phish­ing, smish­ing, and oth­er forms of dig­i­tal fraud, while al­so work­ing with tele­com providers and oth­er stake­hold­ers to strength­en the over­all sys­tem.

“So we’re do­ing a lot of work on that. BATT has been try­ing to co­or­di­nate a stake­hold­er group­ing where we work with the var­i­ous par­ties in­volved in that in­fra­struc­ture to make it a lit­tle more ro­bust, to have stan­dard­ised re­port­ing pro­to­cols, and to reach a stage where we feel a lit­tle more con­fi­dent that we could fight against those threats in cy­ber­space,” How­ell in­di­cat­ed.

A dig­i­tal char­ter is al­so in de­vel­op­ment to es­tab­lish min­i­mum cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty and ser­vice stan­dards across all mem­ber banks, re­duc­ing weak links that could be ex­ploit­ed by cy­ber­crim­i­nals.

How­ell linked the rise in fraud di­rect­ly to gaps in fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy, ar­gu­ing that ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion has not trans­lat­ed in­to un­der­stand­ing or bet­ter de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

In­clu­sion be­yond ac­cess

In­clu­sion, How­ell stressed, is not just about open­ing ac­counts but en­sur­ing that bank­ing ser­vices are ac­ces­si­ble to all, in­clud­ing per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties.

“We felt strong­ly enough that one of BATT’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ties should be to try to move the sec­tor in terms of adopt­ing or be­ing more sen­si­tive to the needs of blind and vi­su­al­ly im­paired per­sons. The plan speaks to adopt­ing ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty prin­ci­ples, which would ef­fec­tive­ly say that these are the things that we need to do to be more in­clu­sive,” How­ell out­lined.

Plans are un­der­way to ex­pand ac­ces­si­ble ATMs, im­prove dig­i­tal plat­forms, and train staff to bet­ter serve cus­tomers with dis­abil­i­ties, with ad­vo­ca­cy groups play­ing a di­rect role in shap­ing so­lu­tions.

“When the banks are do­ing things that im­pact the pop­u­la­tion, we in­clude them in the process be­cause they’re the users. If you’re rolling out an app, there’s no harm in ap­proach­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion to get peo­ple to test the app,” How­ell high­light­ed.

A sec­tor un­der pres­sure to de­liv­er

Af­ter near­ly four decades in fi­nan­cial ser­vices, How­ell re­turned from re­tire­ment to take up the role in De­cem­ber 2025, bring­ing ex­pe­ri­ence from both bank­ing and in­sur­ance in­to a pe­ri­od of height­ened scruti­ny for the sec­tor.

His strat­e­gy is built around pro­mot­ing na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, strength­en­ing in­clu­sion and con­sumer pro­tec­tion, mod­ernising pay­ments, and demon­strat­ing re­spon­si­ble lead­er­ship.

“Banks are of­ten per­ceived as cold, cal­cu­lat­ing, on­ly in­ter­est­ed in num­bers, but not re­al­ly in­ter­est­ed in peo­ple or com­mu­ni­ty or the na­tion or na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. I know that to be not true. But I think the job of BATT is to some­how be­gin to com­mu­ni­cate what the banks are do­ing and to help fa­cil­i­tate that change of per­spec­tive in the bank­ing sec­tor,” How­ell added.