NCB Glob­al Fi­nance Lim­it­ed (NCBGF) has an­nounced that Caribbean In­for­ma­tion & Cred­it Rat­ing Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (Cari­CRIS) has as­signed to it an ini­tial Is­suer/Cor­po­rate Cred­it Rat­ing of CariA (For­eign and Lo­cal Cur­ren­cy) on the re­gion­al rat­ing scale, and ttA on the T&T na­tion­al scale.

Ac­cord­ing to NCBGF, these rat­ings in­di­cate that the lev­el of cred­it­wor­thi­ness of NCBGF, ad­judged in re­la­tion to oth­er oblig­ors with­in T&T and the Caribbean, is good.

“Cari­CRIS has al­so as­signed a sta­ble out­look to the rat­ings This achieve­ment is a tes­ta­ment to the in­tel­lec­tu­al cap­i­tal and in­sti­tu­tion­al will­ing­ness that dri­ves the com­pa­ny, the ag­gres­sive busi­ness growth strat­e­gy and tar­gets, ro­bust Cor­po­rate Gov­er­nance prac­tices and the on­go­ing ef­forts to cre­ate brand and prod­uct dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion.”

Ac­cord­ing to the me­dia re­lease, Cari­CRIS is the Caribbean’s lead­ing cred­it rat­ing agency, with share­hold­ing by re­gion­al Cen­tral Banks, sev­er­al ma­jor re­gion­al com­mer­cial banks, and CRISIL, an as­so­ciate com­pa­ny of the glob­al­ly rec­og­nized rat­ing agency Stan­dard & Poor’s.

NCBGF start­ed op­er­a­tions in De­cem­ber 2013 fol­low­ing the ac­qui­si­tion of AIC Fi­nance Lim­it­ed by NCB Cap­i­tal Mar­kets Lim­it­ed. AIC Fi­nance was re­brand­ed NCB Glob­al Fi­nance in Sep­tem­ber 2014. NCBGF is a li­censed Non-bank Fi­nan­cial In­sti­tu­tion and Bro­ker-Deal­er and is reg­u­lat­ed by the Cen­tral Bank of T&T and the T&T Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion.

The me­dia re­lease said the launch of NCBGF in­to the lo­cal scene rep­re­sent­ed an im­por­tant step in fur­ther deep­en­ing the in­te­gra­tion and strength­en­ing of the Caribbean fi­nan­cial sys­tem giv­en that it marked the first en­try of Ja­maica’s largest fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion in­to the largest re­gion­al econ­o­my.

Sub­se­quent to ac­quir­ing and launch­ing NCBGF, the NCB Fi­nan­cial Group in 2019 ac­quired ma­jor­i­ty con­trol (62 per­cent0 of Guardian Hold­ings Ltd., the largest in­sur­ance con­glom­er­ate (GWP) in the Eng­lish Speak­ing Caribbean.

The me­dia re­lease added that through the em­ploy­ment of a ‘hub and spoke’ mod­el, NCBGF’s Cor­po­rate and In­vest­ment Bank­ing desk cov­ers T&T, Guyana, Suri­name and the Dutch Caribbean.

“In or­der to sup­port as­pi­ra­tional growth tar­gets, NCBGF has and con­tin­ues to fo­cus on gain­ing a com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage in Trinidad and To­ba­go (‘T&T’) via prod­uct and brand dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion and by lever­ag­ing the NCB Fi­nan­cial Group’s var­i­ous in­ter­ests by syn­er­gis­ing prod­uct, in­tel­lec­tu­al cap­i­tal, brand pow­er and dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work.”