An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Term Fi­nance (Grena­da) has ob­tained reg­u­la­to­ry clear­ance to ac­quire the as­sets and lend­ing op­er­a­tions of My Fi­nance Grena­da (Ltd), which is called My­FI.

The ac­qui­si­tion took place last month.

My­Fi is the largest lender to mi­cro, small and medi­um-size (MSMEs) busi­ness­es in Grena­da. Since it was li­censed to op­er­ate six years ago, My­Fi has dis­bursed over EC$15 mil­lion in loans to MSMEs, over 80 per cent of which are as­set-backed.

Dr Chris­t­ian Stone, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Term Fi­nance (SME) told Guardian Me­dia, “What we love about this busi­ness is the ex­tent to which they stood by their cus­tomers’ sides through COVID-19 and Hur­ri­cane Beryl. There was no hold-back in grant­i­ng loans, so tremen­dous brand eq­ui­ty was built through those dif­fi­cult years.”  

Stone said ex­ist­ing My­Fi cus­tomers would im­me­di­ate­ly ben­e­fit from ac­cess to Term Fi­nance’s 100 per cent web-based plat­form.  

When asked how long the ac­qui­si­tion process took, Stone said due dili­gence and reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval took six months.

“Al­though we plan to dig­i­tal­ly trans­form Mi­Fi, we want to hold on to their valu­able field op­er­a­tions. My­Fi meets many of these cus­tomers at their place of busi­ness, which helps the lend­ing team de­vel­op an ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the cus­tomer above and be­yond the num­bers.”

Stone not­ed that this deal makes Term Fi­nance a crit­i­cal play­er in Grena­da’s fi­nan­cial ecosys­tem. They al­ready lend to con­sumers through their Fast­Cash fran­chise and now to MSMEs through My­Fi.

For­mer lead in­vestor in My­Fi, Dr. Patrick An­toine ex­plained that the de­ci­sion to sell was based on the grow­ing need for fi­nanc­ing by Grena­da's MSME sec­tor. The com­pa­ny made a strate­gic de­ci­sion to sell the as­sets and lend­ing op­er­a­tions to Term Fi­nance (Grena­da).  

“The sale is in the best in­ter­est of the busi­ness, the loy­al mi­cro­fi­nance client base, and the em­ploy­ees who will now be an in­te­gral part of a rapid­ly ex­pand­ing op­er­a­tion with a re­gion­al foot­print. I'm con­fi­dent that the fu­ture of My­Fi (Grena­da) is a bright one, as the or­gan­i­sa­tion is unique­ly po­si­tioned for rapid growth and en­hanced cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence ce­ment­ing its po­si­tion as the lead­ing mi­cro­fi­nance en­ti­ty in Grena­da and the OECS.”

“The share­hold­ers and board of My­Fi will be eter­nal­ly grate­ful for the ded­i­ca­tion and sac­ri­fice of the staff; for the sup­port of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty; for the fa­cil­i­ta­tion of the Gov­ern­ment agen­cies and Garfin; and for all those who con­tributed to the proud track record es­tab­lished by the still young, but rapid­ly ma­tur­ing mi­cro­fi­nance gi­ant," An­toine said.

An­toine led a con­sor­tium of five in­vestors who found­ed My­Fi, which start­ed busi­ness in June 2018.

He al­so chairs the British Amer­i­can and Cli­co Pol­i­cy­hold­er Group of the East­ern Caribbean, which is await­ing the judg­ment of the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice in a mat­ter in­volv­ing the col­lapse of CL Fi­nan­cial in 2009. The pol­i­cy­hold­ers' group claims that the T&T gov­ern­ment’s ac­tions to pro­tect the pol­i­cy­hold­ers of cer­tain oth­er sub­sidiaries of CL Fi­nan­cial af­ter its col­lapse dis­crim­i­nat­ed against pol­i­cy­hold­ers in the East­ern Caribbean, ac­cord­ing to the CCJ web­site.

Term Fi­nance op­er­ates in T&T, Bar­ba­dos, Guyana, Ja­maica, and St. Lu­cia. Its suite of prod­ucts in­cludes con­sumer cred­it, small busi­ness cred­it, eCom­merce with prod­uct fi­nanc­ing, and pre­paid Mas­ter­Card ser­vices.  

The com­pa­ny is 80 per cent owned by PointWest Cap­i­tal and 20 per cent owned by the First Cit­i­zens Group.