Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the First Cit­i­zens Group Karen Dar­basie has been ap­point­ed as the new Pres­i­dent of the Bankers As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (BATT).

She takes up the man­tle from im­me­di­ate past pres­i­dent Nigel Bap­tiste, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor, Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd and brings over two decades of bank­ing ex­per­tise to her new po­si­tion.

Ms. Dar­basie will serve as BATT’s Pres­i­dent for the next two years.

Dur­ing her in­au­gur­al speech Ms. Dar­basie re­it­er­at­ed the im­por­tance of the lo­cal bank­ing sec­tor and its wide­spread im­pact do­mes­ti­cal­ly and affirmed her in­tent to en­sure that this im­pact is al­ways con­sid­ered in BATT’s de­lib­er­a­tions and endeavors.

Ms. Dar­basie not­ed sev­er­al ar­eas that the BATT will give pri­or­i­ty to, in­clud­ing a push for the speedy pas­sage of leg­is­la­tion to sat­is­fy glob­al stan­dards and work on the trans­paren­cy and ex­change of in­for­ma­tion for tax pur­pos­es.

Her ap­point­ment as first fe­male Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the First Citizens Group, has been marked by sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ments such as a group-wide or­gan­i­sa­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion ex­er­cise, and sig­nif­i­cant efforts to­ward the ad­vance­ment of women and girls.