Customers of the Territorial Bank of American Samoa have to wait a little bit longer for banking products and services utilizing the bank’s recently approved routing number.
What needs to happen next is for the government owned bank to establish a Master Account with the Federal Reserve Bank which will enable it to be part of the bank payment system.
That will facilitate services such as direct deposits, payroll deductions, debit cards , electronic money transfers and the like.
CEO of TBAS, Phil Ware gave a status report of where things stand concerning the utilization of the routing number for KHJ News and Samoa News yesterday.
Ware concedes its taken a lot longer to obtain the routing number and now tO set up the Master Account than they expected, but points out that TBAS presents “new ground” for which polices and rules have not been set.
Ware said they are proceeding very cautiously to avoid any mistakes.
He says, “We have now made history. We are the first non insured government bank in the US under the FED.”
Ware who has been in the banking industry for 40 year says this is a major achievement.
And he adds for TBAS to be functioning for over a year without a transit number is remarkable and is a credit to the management and staff.
He’s also proud that in more than a year of operation there have been only three complaints about TBAS.
The CEO also spoke about the meeting that Governor Lolo and Congresswoman Aumua Amata held in Las Vegas with the Federal Reserve and said that meeting helped progress things along.
He says he is doing everything he can to help the people of American Samoa but it is taking a bit more time to set up the necessary systems to ensure that everything is done according to rules set by the FED.
Ware points out that because the TBAS model is unprecedented, some of the rules are “being made as we go along.”
The CEO assures that once everything is in place with the Master Account TBAS will starting rolling out products and services in a conservative manner.
He says, “This is a good bank one that we can all be proud of.”
