Ja­maica’s NCB Fi­nan­cial Group (NCBFG) yes­ter­day an­nounced the ap­point­ment of for­mer Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go se­nior man­ag­er, Arvin­der Bharath, to its board of di­rec­tors on Jan­u­ary 2, 2025.

Bharath re­tired from the Cen­tral Bank as se­nior man­ag­er fi­nan­cial tech­nol­o­gy and in­for­ma­tion se­cu­ri­ty on Au­gust 6, 2023.

The an­nounce­ment of Bharath’s ap­point­ment was made in a no­tice head­lined ‘NCB Fi­nan­cial Group fur­ther strength­ens its gov­er­nance frame­work,’ which was pub­lished on the web­site of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change.

NCBFG is a fi­nan­cial ser­vices group that is head­quar­tered in Kingston, Ja­maica, and is list­ed on the Ja­maica and T&T stock ex­changes.

In its no­tice, NCBFG said Bharath “brings over 30 years of com­bined ex­pe­ri­ence across dif­fer­ent ge­o­gra­phies in the bank­ing, reg­u­la­to­ry and tech­nol­o­gy in­dus­tries.”

Be­fore go­ing to the Cen­tral Bank, she was em­ployed as pres­i­dent and coun­try head of RBC in T&T from Oc­to­ber 5, 2009, to June 28, 2013.

Bharath was al­so em­ployed with British multi­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial ser­vices com­pa­ny, Bar­clays Bank, for 11 years, lead­ing its en­try strat­e­gy in­to In­dia, Dubai and South Africa, ac­cord­ing to a Guardian Me­dia in­ter­view pub­lished in March 2010.

Bharath was born in New Del­hi, In­dia, but grew up in Eng­land, where she com­plet­ed an ho­n­ours de­gree in in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy and an MBA in fi­nan­cial ser­vices, both at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don.

In its no­tice, NCBFG said that with the ad­di­tion of Bharath to its board, the fi­nan­cial ser­vices group would now have eight di­rec­tors, five of whom would be deemed in­de­pen­dent, non-ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tors. They are Gary Brown, Thalia Lyn, Howard Shear­er, Sanya Goffe and Bharath.

NCBFG’s three ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tors are its chair­man, Michael Lee-Chin, group CEO, Robert Almei­da and CEO of NCB Ja­maica, Bruce Bowen.

NCBFG is the ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er of T&T’s Guardian Hold­ings Ltd.

For the fi­nan­cial year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024, NCBFG de­clared net prof­it at­trib­ut­able to the share­hold­ers of the par­ent of J$15.02 bil­lion, an in­crease from the re­stat­ed J$3.29 bil­lion the com­pa­ny earned for the fi­nan­cial year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2023.