BEST BANK
Scotiabank
Canada's Scotiabank has been in the Caribbean for 116 years – longer than it has been in Toronto. Today, it has a presence in Anguilla, Antigua, the Bahamas, Barbados, the Cayman Islands, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Netherlands Antilles and Aruba, Puerto Rico, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Maarten, St. Vincent, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos, British Virgin Islands, and the US Virgin Islands. No other bank comes close to that kind of geographic diversity: pretty much the only Caribbean country not on the list is Cuba.
Scotiabank has more than 2 million customers in the Caribbean and central America, and got C$1.16 billion (US$925 million) in revenues from the region in 2004. The bank has an impressive array of large Caribbean operations: the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, and Netherlands Antilles and Aruba all have more than 1,000 employees. Scotiabank Jamaica alone had profits of more than US$95 million in 2004: in aggregate, Scotiabank's franchise in the region is unrivalled.