Rat­ing agency Cari­CRIS has reaf­firms an over­all ‘high cred­it­wor­thi­ness’ rat­ings for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion (UTC).

Cari­CRIS has al­so as­signed a sta­ble out­look on the rat­ings.

Cari­CRIS said it ex­pects the UTC to main­tain its sta­ble cred­it pro­file over the next 12 to 15 months, sup­port­ed by the cor­po­ra­tion’s good prof­itabil­i­ty, liq­uid­i­ty and risk man­age­ment prac­tices.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Cari­CRIS has pro­ject­ed con­tin­ued im­prove­ment in eco­nom­ic con­di­tions which it said is ex­pect­ed to sup­port the per­for­mance of the Cor­po­ra­tion’s in­vest­ment as­sets.

Notwith­stand­ing this, the Rus­sia/Ukraine con­flict has added a new el­e­ment of un­cer­tain­ty which Cari­CRIS said it will mon­i­tor for re­gion­al im­pacts as events un­fold.

“The rat­ings of the UTC re­flect the im­por­tance of the mu­tu­al funds in­dus­try to the econ­o­my, as well as the dom­i­nant mar­ket po­si­tion the cor­po­ra­tion holds as the largest mu­tu­al funds provider in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Cari­CRIS said.

It added that the UTC’s in­vest­ment port­fo­lio con­tin­ues to be well man­aged, with good as­set qual­i­ty and healthy in­vest­ment re­turns. Fur­ther­more, Cari­CRIS not­ed the cor­po­ra­tion’s strong risk man­age­ment prac­tices sup­port the over­all im­prove­ment in op­er­at­ing ef­fi­cien­cy.

“The cor­po­ra­tion con­tin­ues to record good fi­nan­cial per­for­mance de­spite the chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic and cap­i­tal mar­ket con­di­tions in 2021.

“These rat­ing strengths are tem­pered by the ex­ist­ing leg­is­la­tion which could serve to lim­it the Cor­po­ra­tion’s growth, as well as a sub­stan­tial age­ing unithold­er base,” Cari­CRIS warned.