NASSAU, BAHAMAS — Despite severe restrictions on travel that prevented the usual gathering in Barbados, CIBC FirstCaribbean reached around the region recently to honor its brightest and best performers of 2020.
Chief Executive Officer Colette Delaney told those gathered for the online Achievers Awards Ceremony that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has caused staff at all levels to work even harder to meet the needs of clients, and she praised them for rising to the challenge.
“Difficult times have called for innovative approaches to our work, and I am extremely proud of the way our entire team has risen to the challenge,” Delaney told the 10 outstanding achievers drawn from the bank’s business units in Antigua, Barbados, The Bahamas, the Cayman islands, Dominica and Grenada and who were rewarded for outstanding performances in Retail and Business Banking, Corporate and Investment Banking and Enterprise Security and Fraud Management.
“You are the embodiment of the fact that one can excel in the most trying of circumstances.”
Delaney noted that the bank’s “matrix structure” also positioned it to readjust to the new work-from-home environment “as we are quite used to multinational teams working across borders, often by conference calls and our latest toys — WebEx and Microsoft teams”.
“So, to say that FirstCaribbean didn’t miss a beat when the pandemic hit would be an understatement,” she said.
Corporate and Investment Banking Senior Officer Shevette Strachan and Relationship Manager Nickia McPhee were the most outstanding employees in The Bahamas.
Strachan seamlessly and proactively built, scaled, adapted and streamlined all Cash Management Products systems and protocols in response to the growth of that segment in The Bahamas. She lives the brand of CIBC FirstCaribbean, collaborating with her peers and business partners, taking full ownership of all requests received for actioning and applying urgency to each and every task assigned, with agility, while ensuring that integrity is at the forefront of each duty performed.
Despite the impact of hurricane Dorian and then COVID-19 on the economy of The Bahamas, McPhee had another exceptional year in achieving her annual target by 153.6 percent. She not only exceeded her sales targets but is ranked fifth overall in the region in the Platinum space, first as a percentage of overall target and is the highest grossing lender in The Bahamas. She has not only done well in sales, but also managed to provide superior service to her clients at the same time.
Barbadian Lian Richards, senior analyst, Fraud Risk Management, was presented with an Award of Distinction for her outstanding abilities as a fraud investigator and the key role she played during the initial COVID-19 outbreak in ensuring there was no compromise of the bank’s fraud alertness posture.
Other awardees were Sales Specialist Michael Roach, of Antigua; Manager, Business Performance and Strategy Implementation, Kevin Hinds and Jeffrey Newton, head, Credit Underwriting and Portfolio Management, of Barbados; Platinum Manager Laveda Burton and Sales Specialist Kerrin White, of the Cayman islands; Small Business Officer Caryl Fontaine, of Dominica; and Manager, Business Banking, Eberna White, of Grenada.
Delaney told the award winners: “The excellence you have displayed, that got you nominated for these awards, shows your leadership capability and we are relying on you to go back out there and help us keep up the teamwork and collegial spirit.”
Guest speaker Sonia Layne-Gartside, an internationally acclaimed Organizational Change Management (OCM) professional and author of the book “Workplace Anxiety — How to refuel and reengage”, spoke on the topic “Thriving in Uncertainty: Why 2021 will be even bigger and better for you”.
She told the awardees that they were “gems who have shown remarkable resilience in time of uncertainty”. She challenged them to go back to the organization and “sprinkle some of their resilience, ability to be agile and to look past the challenges of the pandemic and to excel in this extraordinary way”.
