CIBC FirstCaribbean’s Chief Executive Officer Colette Delaney today announced that the bank’s board of directors has approved the appointments of three senior executives in the bank.

The bank has appointed Carl Lewis to the position of chief financial officer, to replace Doug Williamson, who is returning to Canada to take up a key position with the bank’s parent, CIBC.

Appointed to replace Lewis in his former role as chief auditor is Khadija Bourne, who formerly served as director, operational risk, in the bank’s Risk Management function.

The final announcement made today was that of Dr Jacqueline Bend, who will take up the position of managing director of the bank’s Bahamas Operating Company, and who will be based in Nassau.

Delaney thanked Williamson for his four years of service to FirstCaribbean and wished him well in his new post in Toronto.

She expressed delight at the appointment of the three executives.

“Carl, Khadija and Jacqui are among the best the region has to offer in the field of financial services,” she said.

“We are extremely pleased to have them on FirstCaribbean’s executive team and are positive they will continue to contribute to the success of the company and help us chart the course for the next several years”.

Lewis has over 20 years’ experience in the finance and banking sectors and is a long-standing member of the CIBC FirstCaribbean team, having joined the bank in 1998. He has held multiple senior roles in finance, corporate and investment banking and strategy.

KEY FINANCE ROLE

During his career with CIBC FirstCaribbean, he has amassed considerable knowledge of the business. He held a number of senior roles in finance prior to moving to corporate banking in 2006. These roles included manager-planning and analysis; controller and head of planning and analysis, culminating with head of strategy, financial planning and analysis in 2005.

Lewis played a key finance role in the formation of CIBC FirstCaribbean between 2001-2002.

Before joining CIBC FirstCaribbean, Lewis was with KPMG for several years in the area of audit and assurance.

Bourne is a career banker with over 25 years’ experience. Since joining CIBC FirstCaribbean in March 2000 as a customer service manager, she held leadership roles in retail banking and operations where she made significant contributions to advancing the bank’s strategic initiatives, revenue growth, development of people and ensuring that the bank maintained a robust compliance and risk management environment.  

Her most recent role was that of director, operational risk, where she led a team responsible for maintaining oversight of the bank’s key operational risk programmes including operational losses, deficiency monitoring, management key control testing, change initiative risk assessments, risk profiles and management of the bank’s corporate insurance.  

Bend is a seasoned banking professional with 30 years’ experience, of which 20 years were senior leadership roles where she successfully led teams in change management, operations, reconciliation & investigations, cards operations, and retail & business banking. 

In her role as director, retail & business banking channels, Bend was responsible for branch operations, people development, strategic initiatives and process improvement, risk and compliance, expense management, digital banking, and the customer care & service centres.

All three appointments take effect from April 1, 2021.