Working Paper Series: Special Edition of 2016 to 2018 Interns

2.2 Financial Sector The ECCU’s financial sector comprises of commercial banks, insurance companies, national development foundations, development finance institutions, credit unions, building and loan associations, and other finance companies. The financial sector is dominated by banking institutions. Financial intermediation in the region has continued to record favourable growth rates due to increased lending as reflected by the rise in domestic credit backed by significant financial innovation. Some of these products include mobile banking, online banking, real time gross settlement systems (RTGS), and an increased number of ATM and POS terminals. These financial products are maintained by financial institutions and enhances their competitiveness in the sector. Financial innovations will not only generate returns for the innovators, but they have the potential to impact the entire economy and can lead to widespread changes. 2.2.1 Financial Innovation within the ECCU The most common type of Point of Sale (POS) are electronic cash register used by merchants. The emphasis of POS terminals are the ease of use of software and hardware and the speed of operation. POS terminals were first introduced within the region in the early 2000’s and has been gradually increasing in numbers over the years. For SaintLucia, there is a greater number of point of sales compare to the other countries (Figure 3). The POS terminals represent the number of organizations accepting card payments and can be used as a gauge of whether citizens are more responsive to technological changes and accepting the new innovative ways of making transactions in the economy.

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