Bankers from Saint Lucia and the rest of the Eastern Caribbean are in Barbados discussing national and regional matters affecting the regional banking and financial community.
They’re attending the annual general meeting of the Caribbean Association of Bankers (CAB), which started yesterday (October 22) and continues until Saturday (October 26).
The meeting is taking place at the Wyndham Grand Barbados Sam Lords Castle Resort and includes a mix of keynote presentations, panel debates and best practice case studies.
The region’s bankers are gathering against the background of continuing changes in the global and regional financial and economic environment and the need to adjust appropriately to the new and extended challenges.
The CAB, based in Saint Lucia, was originally formed as the Caribbean Association of Indigenous Banks (CAIB) in 1974, following a decision (in 1973) by the region’s Heads of Government and Ministers Responsible for Finance.
The Association was formed to encourage banks in member territories “to mitigate the risk of reliance on external providers” and to “share in the ownership and development of a financial services industry with the capacity to satisfy the financial needs and meet regulatory requirements and standards.”
The CARICOM Secretariat provided support in the absence of a Secretariat until the CAB’s first permanent Secretariat was established in Georgetown, Guyana in 1998.
The Secretariat moved to Saint Lucia in 2002 and is staffed by five permanent employees, including a Chief Executive Officer, who is responsible for its day-to-day management.
The CAB serves as a collective voice that “protects, promotes and strengthens the regional banking sector”, with a mission to “proactively influence matters of interest to financial institutions through advocacy and education.”
Its website says CAB’s core values are based on “achieving and maintaining high training deliverables, excellent service, financial viability productive and engaged association members, through “integrity, accountability, commitment, confidentiality, cooperation and capacity building.”
Among recent issues attracting CAB’s attention was the case of a large regional supermarket chain affected by a significant data breach that occurred in April 2022, involving the Hive Ransomware group.
The unidentified supermarket chain was targeted by the ransomware group, which resulted in a massive data dump of over 700,000 files that contained sensitive personal information of both employees and customers, making it the largest-known data breach in the Caribbean to date.
That breach highlighted critical issues in data privacy for businesses across the region and the supermarket chain encountered several severe challenges as a result, including data compromise, operational disruption, regulatory and compliance issues and public relations trust.
In response to the breach, the supermarket chain undertook an immediate response and engaged in the systematic restoration of its data, with added data protection enhancements and public communication.
Among the key lessons learned were Proactive Security Measures, Incident Response Planning, Transparency and Communication and Relevance to the Financial Industry in the Caribbean.
The CAB says the case of the supermarket chain “has important implications for financial institutions and businesses in the Caribbean in terms of Strengthening Security Posture, Regulatory Compliance, Employee Training and Public Communication.”
“By learning from this case,” the CAB adds, “Caribbean financial institutions and businesses can enhance their privacy and data governance frameworks and better prepare for and respond to future data protection challenges.”
Those and other matters were discussed in an exclusive CAB webinar on September 18, 2024, on the theme: “Enhancing Privacy & Data Governance in the Caribbean Financial Sector.”
The 51st CAB meeting is also addressing other recent regional financial matters affecting member entities across the Caribbean.