Loan recovery management featured in CDB training programme for the first time

Basseterre, St. Kitts (December 15, 2015) — Caribbean Development Bank’s 2015 Training Programme for Development Finance Institutions, which was held in collaboration with the Development Bank of St. Kitts and Nevis, closed on Friday December 11 at the St. Kitts Marriott Resort.

The four-week, four-module, training programme opened on November 16 with the last module being ‘Loan Recovery Management with Focus on Legal Issues’ which according to the module’s organiser Mr Tyrone Jones it is the first time it had been offered, based on the demand and the feedback from CDB’s borrowing institutions.

“In the past we have done traditional loan administration, accounting, and governance,” said Mr Jones, CDB’s Operations Officer, Private Sector Development Unit. “From the response I have received, Loan Recovery Management is one that we are likely to continue for maybe in the next two or three future presentations.”

The module ‘Loan Recovery Management with Focus on Legal Issues’ opened on Wednesday December 9, where welcome remarks were delivered by Mr Carlton Pogson, Assistant General Manager of the Development Bank of St. Kitts and Nevis.

“Over the last five years or more, since the economic meltdown, delinquency has been a serious issue that all of the financial institutions across the region have been facing, from the large ones to the very small ones,” said Mr Pogson. “As we come together and we put our heads to deal with this whole issue of loan recovery, we also have to address the legal issues about loan recovery.”

The course was attended by 21 participants from 13 different institutions drawn from ten of the Caribbean Development Bank’s Borrowing Member Countries (BMCs); Bahamas (one participant), Belize (two), British Virgin Islands (two), Dominica (one), Grenada (one), Haiti (one), Jamaica (two), Montserrat (one), St. Lucia (three), and host country St. Kitts and Nevis (seven).

The fourth and final module was facilitated by Mr Kevin Boyce, a partner in the Litigation Department of Clarke Gittens Farmer in Barbados. An LLB graduate of the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus, in 2000 he was admitted to practise in both Barbados and Trinidad. His practise is mainly in the field of commercial and civil litigation with an active cross border practice, and his clients include the major regional commercial banks and conglomerates.

Attending the course included a number of CEOs and senior managers, but also had people involved in collections. According to Mr Boyce, the course being new, they were trying to bring loan recovery management techniques to be taught to banking individuals who would normally have to deal with it and have to liaise with lawyers.

“So what the CDB wanted to do was to bring a course to these individuals the different techniques and the different areas which the lawyers have to deal with so as to improve the tool kit which these individuals have,” commented Mr Boyce.

“So now, hopefully, these bankers are equipped with more equipment which allows them to engage with the lawyers that they are utilising and perhaps give them some ideas to stimulate the case to hopefully find some solutions to that they face.”

Closing ceremony and presentation of certificates took place at Kittitian Hill Resort, where Mr Lenworth Harris General Manager of the co-hosting institution the Development Bank of St. Kitts and Nevis thanked the Caribbean Development Bank for offering them the opportunity to co-host the ‘2015 Training Programme for Development Finance Institutions’.

“I would hope that during the course of the time that you have been here you would have enjoyed our hospitality, you would have found the workshop to have been exceedingly productive, and what was communicated to you that would go to influence how you proceed taking your business when you get back,” said Mr Harris.

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