Sean Nero

The pro­posed merg­er of the T&T Mort­gage Fi­nance Com­pa­ny (TTMF) and Home Mort­gage Bank, as an­nounced by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an, will have a com­bined as­set base of $4.82 bil­lion.

In­grid Lash­ley, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer at the TTMF, on Mon­day said with sus­tain­able fund­ing, the pro­posed T&T Mort­gage Bank will re­dound to the ben­e­fit of mort­gagors and in­vestors. Dook­er­an said there will be an ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing (IPO) by the Gov­ern­ment to cre­ate the T&T Mort­gage Bank (TTMB).

Lash­ley said var­i­ous le­gal and cor­po­rate struc­tures have been pro­posed and that the Fi­nance Min­istry's tran­si­tion team would re­view and re­search each of the struc­tures to de­ter­mine the ap­proach best suit­ed to cre­ate the merged en­ti­ty.

"The mod­el is still to be de­tailed and de­fined af­ter dis­cus­sions of the pa­ra­me­ters that will make for the most ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive sys­tem of amal­ga­ma­tion/merg­er." She did not say if a merg­er had been con­tem­plat­ed when the idea for a TTMB first arose, but said that both mort­gages in­sti­tu­tions, which are ma­jor­i­ty-owned by the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board, were mem­bers of the Min­istry of Fi­nance's tran­si­tion team. Speak­ing on the is­sue of af­ford­able homes, Dook­er­an said, gov­ern­ment has de­cid­ed through the TTMF to pro­vide mort­gages at re­duced in­ter­est rates. He said that mort­gage rates, which are cur­rent­ly be­tween six and eight per cent, will be re­duced to be­tween five and sev­en per cent. This will ben­e­fit more than 13,000 home­own­ers and will be­come ef­fec­tive dur­ing 2012.

Lash­ley said: "As an ap­proved mort­gage com­pa­ny un­der the Hous­ing Act, TTMF's in­ter­est rates for the AMC (ap­proved mort­gage com­pa­nies) pro­gramme (prop­er­ties up to $850,000) is de­ter­mined by the min­is­ter and is now six to eight per cent. "Once the mech­a­nism for re­duc­tion in in­ter­est rates is de­ter­mined and agreed, it is in­tend­ed that all TTMF mort­gagors (new and ex­ist­ing) who have mort­gages un­der the AMC pro­gramme, in par­tic­u­lar, will ben­e­fit from a re­duc­tion in in­ter­est rate."