BSP shuts branches due to election-related violence

Bank South Pacific’s chief executive officer Robin Fleming says election related violence across the country has only inconvenienced its customers.
Fleming said Mendi and Pogera branches had been closed for some weeks while few others across the country did so intermittently as the General Election 2022 counting was underway.
“In reality, we don’t lose any money from those closures,” he said.
“We’ll be able to overcome the transactional activities we missed out on today when people maintain additional transactional activity in the coming weeks.
“We’re only concerned for the inconvenience this will have on our customers; for their sake, BSP doesn’t have the luxury of closing for too long.
“We have to make sure that we can provide that much needed banking service all around the country but we must also consider the safety of our staff.
“The last three to four months has been somewhat of a turbulent period for some of our 44 branches and 40-odd sub-branches.”
Fleming also pointed out the alternate option made available by their digital products such as mobile merchants. “Anyone registered on our BSP SMS (short message service) banking is able to do a transaction with a merchant without having to have cash or card, convenient for our customers,” he said.
The group CEO was in Madang last week with members of the senior management team, for a group board meeting.
Fleming said the meeting coincided with the release of the BSP Financial Group Ltd’s half-yearly results of K396 million after tax (government’s additional company tax of K190 million).
While in Madang, the group commissioned two new automated teller machines (ATM) in Madang town and as part of their community project, donated about 100 desks to Holy Spirit Primary School.