The Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion (UTC) Group made a loss of $33 mil­lion in 2018 ac­cord­ing to its Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor Nigel Ed­wards. The Cor­po­ra­tion is re­port­ing a TT$293 mil­lion de­cline in to­tal in­come last year when com­pared to 2017.

This is the since the UTC group start­ed prepar­ing con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial re­port it has record­ed a loss.

Ed­wards told Guardian Me­dia that the re­ver­sal of $88 mil­lion when com­pared to 2017 was main­ly as a re­sult of the new ac­count­ing stan­dards that the cor­po­ra­tion had to adopt.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with GML, Ed­wards said al­ready the com­pa­ny was see­ing pos­i­tive move­ments in its net po­si­tion in 2019 with a change in the fair val­ue of $ 288.7 mil­lion.

In its an­nu­al re­port, the UTC’s Chief Fi­nan­cial Of­fi­cer’s in­di­cat­ed that to­tal in­come de­clined from 996 mil­lion in 2017 to 772 mil­lion in 2018. The prin­ci­pal dri­ver of this was un­favourable move­ments in the fair val­ue of in­vest­ments se­cu­ri­ties amount­ing to TT$456 mil­lion in 2018.

There was a re­duc­tion of TT$224 mil­lion in re­alised cap­i­tal gains due to the re­bal­anc­ing of the in­vest­ment port­fo­lio for the Growth and In­come Fund and the Uni­ver­sal Re­tire­ment Fund.

The Re­port al­so said that the Group’s fo­cus on en­hanc­ing unithold­ers’ wealth and pro­vid­ing com­pet­i­tive re­turns led to in­creased dis­tri­b­u­tion pay­ments of TT$52 mil­lion and to­tal dis­tri­b­u­tion to unithold­ers was TT$249.3 mil­lion.

De­spite these chal­lenges in 2018, the re­port said for the first time in its his­to­ry the Growth and In­come Fund crossed the $5 bil­lion mark.

Speak­ing on Mon­day at the An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing, Ed­wards told unithold­ers that as at April 30, 2019 the UTC had in its Growth and In­come Fund TT$5.2 bil­lion un­der man­age­ment.

“The suc­cess of the Growth and In­come Fund sur­passed our ex­pec­ta­tions. Many peo­ple in T&T are now so­phis­ti­cat­ed, re­spon­si­ble in­vestors and as such, the UTC con­tin­ues to look for new ways that are aligned to the in­dus­try’s best prac­tice to bring you val­ue.”

Oth­er key per­for­mance in­di­ca­tors that he point­ed out in­clude growth in as­sets to $22 bil­lion, a growth in cus­tomer base by 1.3 per­cent, cash flow gen­er­a­tion of $514 mil­lion and favourable re­turns in mu­tu­al fund port­fo­lios with the TT Dol­lar In­come Fund cross­ing the $11 bil­lion mark for the first time in its his­to­ry.

He said the re­cent ap­pli­ca­tion by the Caribbean In­for­ma­tion and Cred­it Rat­ing Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (Cari­CRIS) of a “high” cred­it rat­ing val­i­dates that the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion is on the right path.

He al­so re­ferred to the lim­it­ed avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign cur­ren­cy in the coun­try.

“Un­like the com­mer­cial banks, the UTC is not a pri­ma­ry deal­er of for­eign ex­change and as such we are not in re­ceipt of an al­lo­ca­tion from the Cen­tral Bank. Our sup­ply of US dol­lars is de­pen­dent on what we pur­chase from cus­tomers and what is bought from oth­er fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions. The for­eign ex­change mar­ket is ex­treme­ly re­strict­ed, so we will en­sure that many of our unithold­ers have ac­cess to the lim­it­ed funds avail­able. Cus­tomers in the US In­come Fund can ac­cess their funds via their visa card, wire trans­fer or cheque,” he said.