The Caribbean In­for­ma­tion and Cred­it Rat­ing Ser­vices Ltd (Cari­CRIS) has reaf­firmed the cred­it rat­ings of CariA (For­eign and Lo­cal Cur­ren­cy) on the re­gion­al rat­ing scale, and ttA on the T&T na­tion­al scale to the NCB Mer­chant Bank T&T Ltd.

These rat­ings in­di­cate that the lev­el of cred­it­wor­thi­ness of this oblig­or, ad­judged in re­la­tion to oth­er oblig­ors with­in T&T and the Caribbean is good, Cari­CRIS said.

Cari­CRIS has al­so main­tained a sta­ble out­look on the rat­ings. The rat­ing agency said the sta­ble out­look is pred­i­cat­ed on its ex­pec­ta­tion that over the next 12 to 15 months, NCB Mer­chant will re­main prof­itable, sup­port­ed by im­prove­ments in T&T’s eco­nom­ic con­di­tions. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the com­pa­ny is ex­pect­ed to main­tain its good cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion and liq­uid­i­ty pro­file as it con­tin­ues to grow.

Ac­cord­ing to Cari­CRIS, the rat­ings of NCB Mer­chant con­tin­ue to re­flect the com­pa­ny’s com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage, which lies in its af­fil­i­a­tion with the NCB Fi­nan­cial Group (NCBFG), a lead­ing fi­nan­cial ser­vices provider in the re­gion. NCBFG's chair­man is Michael Lee-Chin.

"The rat­ings al­so re­flect the com­pa­ny’s good fi­nan­cial per­for­mance sup­port­ed by con­tin­ued prof­itabil­i­ty. Fur­ther­more, NCB Mer­chant main­tains good as­set qual­i­ty, com­fort­able cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion lev­els and a sta­ble fund­ing base.

"These rat­ing strengths are tem­pered by the small size of NCB Mer­chant as a play­er in a high­ly com­pet­i­tive mar­ket, as well as its sig­nif­i­cant as­set/li­a­bil­i­ty ma­tu­ri­ty mis­match which height­ens short-term liq­uid­i­ty and re­fi­nanc­ing risks," Cari­CRIS added.

The NCB Mer­chant Bank T&T Ltd, for­mer­ly NCB Glob­al Fi­nance Ltd was in­cor­po­rat­ed in T&T in No­vem­ber 1982 and com­menced op­er­a­tions in Jan­u­ary 1983 as AIC Fi­nance Ltd.

Ef­fec­tive Au­gust 1993, the com­pa­ny was li­censed as a fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion un­der the Fi­nan­cial In­sti­tu­tions Act 1993, to con­duct the fol­low­ing class­es of busi­ness: fi­nance com­pa­ny, con­firm­ing house/ ac­cep­tance house, leas­ing cor­po­ra­tion, and mort­gage in­sti­tu­tion.

In Au­gust 2003, the com­pa­ny was li­censed by the Cen­tral Bank of T&T (CBTT) as a mer­chant bank and thus per­mit­ted to en­gage in for­eign ex­change deal­ing.

The com­pa­ny is reg­u­lat­ed and su­per­vised by the CBTT and the T&T Se­cu­ri­ties Ex­change Com­mis­sion (TTSEC).