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From:TheBahamasWeekly.com News
Nassau, The Bahamas – Despite severe restrictions on travel which prevented the usual gathering in Barbados, CIBC FirstCaribbean reached around the region recently to honour its brightest and best performers for 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,” Ms. Delaney said. “You are the embodiment of the fact that one can excel in the most trying of circumstances,” the CEO told the 10 outstanding achievers drawn from the bank’s business units in Antigua, Barbados, Bahamas, Cayman Islands, Dominica and Grenada and who were rewarded for outstanding performances in Retail and Business Banking, Corporate and Investment Banking and Enterprise Security & Fraud Management.
She 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 multi-national 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!” Senior Officer, Corporate and Investment Banking, Shevette Strachan and Relationship Manager, Nickia McPhee were the most outstanding employees in The Bahamas. Shevette 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, 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 Nickia had another exceptional year in achieving her annual target by 153.6%. Nickia not only exceeded her sales targets but is ranked 5th overall in the region in the Platinum space, (1st as a percentage of overall target), and is the highest grossing lender in the Bahamas Nickia has not only done well in sales, but she has also managed to provide superior client 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 banks 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 Cayman Islands, Small Business Officer, Caryl Fontaine of Dominica and Manager, Business Banking, Eberna White of Grenada. “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.” Ms. Delaney told the award winners. 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 pass the challenges of the pandemic and to excel in this extraordinary way”.
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