The Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion on Thurs­day launched UTC Glob­al Bal­anced Fund Ltd (UTC GBFL), the first re­tail mu­tu­al fund in the East­ern Caribbean Cur­ren­cy Union (EC­CU).

UTC GBFL is de­signed to fa­cil­i­tate wealth cre­ation op­por­tu­ni­ties, pro­mote in­vest­ment lit­er­a­cy re­gion­al­ly, cre­ate em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for pro­fes­sion­als in the EC­CU, and fur­ther de­vel­op the East­ern Caribbean Se­cu­ri­ties Mar­ket.

Speak­ing at the launch, UTC’s ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, Nigel Ed­wards, said deep­en­ing the cap­i­tal mar­ket and de­vel­op­ing new sources of cap­i­tal is a nec­es­sary link to na­tion­al and re­gion­al de­vel­op­ment.

“Frankly, be­yond the com­mer­cial ben­e­fits, pool­ing cap­i­tal in this way is an ab­solute re­quire­ment for us to solve some of the in­fra­struc­ture and oth­er is­sues that face our is­land na­tions.

“We know that all of this is on­ly made pos­si­ble through build­ing and nur­tur­ing strong re­la­tion­ships, and we thank our col­leagues and part­ners across the East­ern Caribbean land­scape for their un­stint­ing sup­port for this ini­tia­tive,” Ed­wards added.

UTC GBFL, a whol­ly-owned sub­sidiary of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion, is an in­vest­ment com­pa­ny in­cor­po­rat­ed in St Lu­cia to op­er­ate as a Col­lec­tive In­vest­ment Scheme (CIS) in the EC­CU.

Ac­cord­ing to Ed­wards, 41 years ago, when the UTC first opened its doors, right up to the present day, its guid­ing premise has been of­fer­ing wealth cre­ation op­por­tu­ni­ties for all, trans­form­ing lives, and em­pow­er­ing our cus­tomers to make fi­nan­cial­ly sound de­ci­sions.

Ed­wards added that the com­pa­ny has grown from a team of 50 en­ter­pris­ing and pas­sion­ate pi­o­neers to over 500 strong, serv­ing over 543,000 unithold­ers and man­ag­ing nine pro­pri­etary funds, with Funds Un­der Man­age­ment of US$3.6B.

While not­ing that the UTC has al­so faced many chal­lenges and it has al­so record­ed many mile­stones, en­abling progress to­wards fi­nan­cial au­ton­o­my through the pro­vi­sion of qual­i­ty in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and fi­nan­cial ed­u­ca­tion.

Al­so speak­ing at the event was re­gion­al was CIS Man­ag­er for UTC GBFL, Omar Burch-Smith added that the framers of the EC­CU when they signed the agree­ment es­tab­lish­ing the East­ern Caribbean Cen­tral Bank on Ju­ly 5, 1983, would have en­vi­sioned cre­at­ing an ecosys­tem that would pro­vide eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty with a sta­ble cur­ren­cy, an av­enue for wealth cre­ation through sav­ings and a ro­bust bank­ing sys­tem that would serve the needs of all.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day, Sek­ou Mark, the UTC’s chief in­vest­ment of­fi­cer, said the new mu­tu­al fund can on­ly be sold at bro­ker-deal­ers li­censed by the East­ern Caribbean Se­cu­ri­ties Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion.

The eight coun­tries in which the new fund will be avail­able are: An­guil­la, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, Montser­rat, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lu­cia, and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines. In­vestors in these coun­tries would be able to sub­scribe to the mu­tu­al fund for as lit­tle as US$100, which is EC$270.

The UTC GBFL is sched­uled to go on sale in the East­ern Caribbean in June.

“If a Trinidad and To­ba­go in­vestor wished to pur­chase a UTC GBFL share, he/she may do so by vis­it­ing a li­censed bro­ker-deal­er in the East­ern Caribbean,” Mark said.