No regulation of fees & rates

The head of the ScotiaGroup has come out strongly against suggestions that the Government or the Bank of Jamaica regulate lending rates and bank fees to bring them down.

The suggestion of regulation has been mooted with financial institutions perceived to be too slow to bring down rates to benefit consumers.

However, Bruce Bowen, Chief Executive Officer of ScotiaGroup, has sought to play down those suggestions citing that the result may be undesirable for consumers.

"If all prices and rates are controlled and standardized that's the best example of there being no competition. What do you compete on if everything is the same?

"So you are trying to create this value proposition and we all know that there are certain retailers we go to you know they are not the cheapest but you get a level of service that’s better and you’re prepared to pay for it," said Mr. Bowen.

No mass job losses

He has also sought to assure Scotia employees that mass redundancies are not on the horizon in order to bring lending rates down.

Just last week, Mr. Bowen said part of the reason for high interest rates is the high cost-structure of banks.

According to him, in order to bring down rates those costs which include salaries and wages must be controlled.

"For all Scotia bank employees out there it does not mean redundancies, what it means is we need to continue to look for more efficient ways to be delivering our service, and over time we cant get the efficiency of a network that has taken 120 years to build down in six months," Mr. Bowen said.