Increasing taxes/price of food won't make people healthy.

Agreed. Focus on the individual average Bahamain experience. You can survey 100 random Bahamians and they will tell you how bad the banking experience is for them. Who are the banks and regulators concerned about? Average Bahamians with a couple thousand in their account? I don't think so, but that is who is getting impacted

Lol, the officials looking for more money. Not interested in the clean up just the money.

Lol, This is a common business tactic. Make it an individual's responsibility because, really the average individual has no impact. So they just diffuse the situation with this rhetoric instead of the business taking on responsibility. And wasn't Gowon Bowe just involved in articles about how difficult it is to open bank accounts in the Bahamas? So you think Bahamians have time to switch banks when it takes 2 months just to get an appointment

My experience was worse, the appointment was 4 months away. It's a disgrace. Imagine being on a family island when many islands don't have any bank branches anymore. You have to fly to Nassau 2-3 times before you can get a bank account. In the 90s I remember the banks used to promote people getting accounts with them. They had special accounts for kids to open savings accounts (no fees and no minimum balance). Now look at where were are 25-35 years later. Businesses and people on the family island have to rely on their mattresses, webshops, mailboat and aircraft crews to store and send money.

Thank goodness someone with enough power to be heard is pointing out the intellectually dishonest wording of the findings. In a way what they were saying was once we've decided to give you a bank account 99% of the time we give it to you. But the issue is before this. How long and what is the success rate of the average Bahamian for going from no bank account to a bank account? How long before the bank gives you an appointment and does prescreening? What is that success rate for me walking off the street into a branch today for the first time with no prior contact/arrangements?

But what about the process to get to the application stage? I tried to open a bank account last year in June at CIBC. They said their next available appointment for new account openings was late September (4 months just to get an appointment to apply). Imagine needing your first bank account because you got your first job and need to set up direct pay deposit and the bank says in 4 months you can meet with us so we can determine if you can apply. It's very strange. In the USA and Canada, you can open an account in minutes online. In the 90's in the Bahamas, you could walk into the branch without an appointment and open a bank account the same day. They even used to have promotional bank accounts for kids to have a bank account to save.

Meanwhile, young Bahamian nurses and medical techs are leaving the Bahamas to work in other countries because the pay and the opportunities are inadequate to support a Bahamian standard of living.

No way, I can't believe it

There are Bahamians who can do these jobs; it's just that the government would rather hire immigrants at a lower wage and who have less freedom to speak up for their rights. Bahamians are slowly becoming extinct. How can we accept our government spending our/country's wealth on foreign labour, while I know many nurses and medical staff who left the Bahamas to work in the USA and Canada because the jobs here are not adequate.