Caribbean In­for­ma­tion and Cred­it Rat­ing Ser­vices Ltd (Cari­cris) has reaf­firmed ‘high cred­it­wor­thi­ness’ rat­ings for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion (UTC).

In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Cari­cris said these rat­ings in­di­cate that the lev­el of cred­it­wor­thi­ness of this oblig­er is high when ad­judged by oth­er oblig­ers in T&T and the wider Caribbean.

Cari­cris al­so main­tained a sta­ble out­look on the rat­ings.

The sta­ble out­look, it said, is based on the high like­li­hood that over the next 12 to 15 months, UTC will ex­pe­ri­ence a turn­around in prof­itabil­i­ty un­der­pinned by in­creased man­age­ment charge in­come from growth in Funds Un­der Man­age­ment (FUM).

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the con­tin­ued fo­cus on re­gion­al and prod­uct ex­pan­sion is ex­pect­ed to im­pact the cor­po­ra­tion’s in­come pos­i­tive­ly.

Prof­itabil­i­ty is, how­ev­er, ex­pect­ed to be tem­pered by an in­crease in ex­pens­es as UTC in­tends to im­ple­ment new tech­no­log­i­cal projects.

More­over, Cari­cris said the cor­po­ra­tion is ex­pect­ed to re­main well-cap­i­talised and have a strong liq­uid­i­ty po­si­tion.

“The rat­ings of UTC con­tin­ue to re­flect the im­por­tance of the mu­tu­al funds in­dus­try to the T&T econ­o­my, as well as the cor­po­ra­tion’s mar­ket po­si­tion as the largest mu­tu­al funds provider in T&T.

UTC’s in­vest­ment port­fo­lio con­tin­ues to be well man­aged with good as­set qual­i­ty and healthy in­vest­ment re­turns, which con­tin­ues to sup­port the cor­po­ra­tion’s prof­itabil­i­ty,” the re­lease high­light­ed.

Fur­ther­more, Cari­cris said UTC’s strong risk man­age­ment prac­tices sup­port an over­all im­prove­ment in op­er­at­ing ef­fi­cien­cy and un­der­pin the rat­ings.

It not­ed that these rat­ing strengths were tem­pered by the ex­ist­ing leg­is­la­tion which could lim­it the cor­po­ra­tion’s growth.

Al­so con­strain­ing the rat­ing is UTC’s age­ing unithold­er base which could im­pact long-term growth.

The rat­ing firm said rat­ing sen­si­tiv­i­ty fac­tors that can in­di­vid­u­al­ly or col­lec­tive­ly im­prove the rat­ing and out­look in­clude im­prov­ing mar­ket and eco­nom­ic con­di­tions over the next 12 to 15 months; lead­ing to sus­tained net in­vest­ment in­come growth; di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of funds un­der man­age­ment to in­clude a greater share of young in­vestors; and the suc­cess­ful ex­pan­sion and im­ple­men­ta­tion of op­er­a­tions in­to the Caribbean lead­ing to pos­i­tive im­pacts on rev­enue.