South African, Neal Peterson, a presenter at yesterday’s conference greets Leader of the Opposition, Mia Mottley prior to the start of the second half of the morning session.
Insurance and Financial Advisors are being reminded that to survive in their professions, they must embrace change.
Leader of the Opposition, the Hon. Mia Mottley, explained that this new generation of young professionals will be thinking differently as to how they plan their savings and provide for their retirement.
“And how they relate to you therefore as Financial Advisors will change, and unless you adopt and adapt to that new environment, or you will find yourselves outside of the loop as well”.
“So, I ask you to start to open your minds and recognise that the young people coming out of school, who we are teaching different – they are not going to relate to you as their parents would have. They are going to go on the internet and find opportunities for themselves to plan their own investment opportunities and their own retirement plans… A defined benefits plan that we became so accustomed to in my generation and the generation before, is not going to be the norm,” she stressed.
“So, how are you going to relate to them in a world where capital still does move more freely, in spite of the challenges we have here in this region. Then at the macrolevel, how are we going to ensure that we can pool their savings to be able to be an engine and the fuel for growth in a region that is chronically underperforming. In a region where the commercial banks have sent enough messages to us that they are prepared to shift their presence because the region is not giving them the return it gave them for the last century”.
Mottley was at the time addressing the Caribbean Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors (CARAIFA) 31st Annual Sales Congress held at the Hilton Resort yesterday.
She acknowledged that this year’s theme “The Power of Imagination” is as thought provoking as it is potentially life changing.
“And, if your approach to life changes, it opens avenues for your approach to your profession and your business to change. It provides opportunities for you to be more creative, more innovative, the tangible expressions of the power of imagination”.
“We meet today at very interesting time in our history. We meet today at time when we are going to have to make some decision as to how we start to do thing differently. But, as we start to do them differently let us remember that if we don’t factor in the critical importance of trust and working together then we are going to face these challenges over and over again. The difference is that we do so with less capacity to recover each time, and that is the danger that the Caribbean, in particular Barbados finds itself in at this point in time,” she observed.
The Political Leader of the Barbados Labour Party also told the delegates from across the Caribbean and North America that the “bureaucratic nonsense” of singular Financial Services Commissions has to stop in this region.
“We recognise that it is a nonsense for each of us to have separate financial services commissions to regulate at an individual level in circumstances where countries are moving capital and people across regions in the context of a single market and economy”.
“In the same way, we have a Caribbean Court of Justice that has both national and regional jurisdiction, we have need for a single Financial Services Commission that has both national and regional jurisdiction to meet the needs of the regional and multi-national firms for which you all work,” Mottley said. (TL)