Customers disgruntled with the sale of Bank of Bermuda to HSBC have already made approaches to move over to Capital G Bank, according to the new bank's chief executive officer Sarah Farrington.

But she said that Capital G would not be targeting unhappy Bank of Bermuda customers or marketing the bank as “more local” than the possible HSBC bought-out Bank of Bermuda.

“We hope customers will come because they are attracted to our products rather than being unhappy per se, but some of them will no doubt come, even though this is not our target,” she said.

Shareholders are due to vote on whether to approve the sale of Bank of Bermuda to international banking giant HSBC on February 16.

Ms Farrington said that the possible sale of Bank of Bermuda would also leave a lot of cash free in the economy and many would be looking to reinvest this money in Bermuda.

And she said that Capital G was set to cash in on this possible windfall and had adjusted the launch of several savings and deposit products to make sure they would coincide, should the sale go through.

“We have not created any new products for this, but we are always looking at our deposits and savings products and we have changed the launch of some of them slightly to make the timing better,” she said.

And Ms Farrington said that when they had launched new cards last year they had been surprised by the fact that 50 percent of those who signed up were customers of the other two banks. “We were very surprised by the number of people willing to try us,” she said. “There are a lot of people looking at new products out there.”

Ms Farrington said that she thought that the HSBC buy-out of Bank of Bermuda was a “natural evolution” and the announcement had come as not surprise to her. She said that when Capital G got its bank licence in 2001, it had been made clear to them that the banking sector was to be opened up and there was the real possibility of foreign banks moving into Bermuda.

“It is a natural evolution of banking in Bermuda and certainly thought it would happen either by a bank being bought out or a bank moving to Bermuda,” she said. “The Bermuda Monetary Authority said at the time (when they were granted a licence) the financial services sector was being opened up.”

And she said that for the bank it was a good move, particularly as they were now able to call themselves a truly international bank, which would open doors for new clients as well as for its remaining employees who would be able to transfer to branches all over the world. But she said that while it would allow the bank to tap into the international business market more easily and expand its reach in this sector, it was still unclear what would happen locally, which was making some customers uneasy.

“We have had customers come in and say they are not happy with the deal,” she said. “It is not particularly clear at the moment what will happen with the local banking sector.”

She said as a bank the buy-out would not really affect them as it appeared the newly bought out bank would be focussing on international clients, which Ms Farrington said was not a market they were going after.

“Bank of Bermuda had said it was too small to go after this market, but if the sale goes through it will be able to expand in this area,” she said.

“We have some international companies, but we are so small compared to most of them they are not comfortable leaving their money with us. Our target is the local customers, whether high net individuals or not. We also target local business or the smaller international business.”