The Home Mort­gage Bank has part­nered with IDB In­vest to is­sue a So­cial Bond.

The Bond, which has been is­sued for $300 mil­lion with a tenor of five years, is the first of its kind in T&T and the Caribbean Re­gion.

It al­so rep­re­sents the sec­ond lo­cal cur­ren­cy trans­ac­tion com­plet­ed be­tween HMB and IDB In­vest with a cu­mu­la­tive val­ue of $550 mil­lion.

HMB said in a me­dia re­lease.

HMB added the So­cial Bond is aligned with the So­cial Bond Prin­ci­ples (SBP) pub­lished by the sec­re­tari­at of the In­ter­na­tion­al Cap­i­tal Mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion (IC­MA).

This it stat­ed had re­ceived an “Aligned” rat­ing for its me­thod­i­cal frame­work from Stan­dard and Poor’s, an ex­ter­nal con­sul­tant spe­cial­is­ing in The­mat­ic Bond is­suances.

The bond is an in­vest­ment in­stru­ment cre­at­ed to fa­cil­i­tate the erad­i­ca­tion/mit­i­ga­tion of so­cial chal­lenges.

This is­suance is geared to­wards the hous­ing fi­nance mar­ket in T&T and aligned with the fol­low­ing SDGs goals of re­duced in­equities and end­ing pover­ty in all its forms every­where. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it is to be used to make cities and hu­man set­tle­ments in­clu­sive, safe, re­silient and sus­tain­able while al­so aid­ing in the de­vel­op­ment of de­cent work and eco­nom­ic growth and cli­mate ac­tion.

HMB said the So­cial Bond will be used ex­clu­sive­ly to pur­chase mort­gages from the T&T Mort­gage Fi­nance Com­pa­ny’s (TTMF) sub­sidised mort­gage port­fo­lio.

This ini­tia­tive will sup­port TTMF’s fi­nanc­ing of homes to per­sons with low-and mid­dle-in­come as these mort­gages in­clude the gov­ern­ment of T&T’s two per cent and five per cent pro­grammes.

HMB not­ed that this seg­ment of the mar­ket re­mains an em­pha­sis for the T&T gov­ern­ment as per­sons with­in these in­come lev­els con­tin­ue to face chal­lenges ac­cess­ing fund­ing with­in tra­di­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

The part­ner­ship is al­so set to cre­ate green fi­nanc­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties as HMB will al­so re­ceive tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance from IDB In­vest to de­vel­op a sus­tain­able fi­nance strat­e­gy and an En­vi­ron­men­tal and So­cial Man­age­ment Sys­tem.

HMB said in the re­lease that its teams will con­duct a mar­ket study for green hous­ing to iden­ti­fy op­por­tu­ni­ties lo­cal­ly for both mort­gages and the cap­i­tal mar­kets. This, HMB said will fos­ter a sus­tain­able ap­proach to the de­liv­ery hous­es in T&T and an ex­pan­sion of in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cal in­vestors.

Act­ing CEO of HMB, Brent McFee, said, “I am con­fi­dent of the nu­mer­ous so­cio-eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits it would pro­vide to per­sons and by ex­ten­sion de­vel­op­ment of T&T.”

“I am al­so ex­cit­ed about the pos­si­bil­i­ties for green/sus­tain­able fi­nanc­ing and the im­mense op­por­tu­ni­ty for Home Mort­gage Bank and Trinidad and To­ba­go. It’s in­deed a plea­sure to part­ner with the team at IDB In­vest to un­der­take these ground­break­ing ven­tures,” McFee stat­ed.

James Scriv­en, CEO of IDB In­vest said, “In ad­di­tion, it will pro­mote the growth of the do­mes­tic cap­i­tal mar­kets and con­tribute to its eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. Thanks to this fi­nanc­ing, we once again reaf­firm our com­mit­ment to pro­mote de­vel­op­ment in the coun­try.”