The T&T Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion (TTUTC) achieved an­oth­er sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone on Thurs­day, when it launched the UTC Glob­al Bal­anced Fund Ltd (UTC GBFL) to the peo­ple of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

TTUTC ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor and UTC GBFL di­rec­tor Nigel Ed­wards, in his fea­ture ad­dress, em­pha­sised TTUTC’s com­mit­ment to bring­ing fi­nan­cial em­pow­er­ment to the cit­i­zens across the Caribbean. The event was held at San­dals, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

“Our ex­pan­sion in­to St Vin­cent tran­scends mere pres­ence; it deep­ens our role as part­ners in the Caribbean’s eco­nom­ic progress,” Ed­wards said, not­ing that this ap­proach to ex­pan­sion re­flects their ded­i­ca­tion to fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy, al­low­ing cit­i­zens to make in­formed de­ci­sions that sup­port their fi­nan­cial fu­tures.

“We be­lieve a more fi­nan­cial­ly em­pow­ered re­gion is with­in our reach,” said Ed­wards.

In line with this, the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor said, in 2023, UTC in­tro­duced three new mu­tu­al funds in Ja­maica in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the GraceKennedy Group, with funds un­der man­age­ment now reach­ing US$31.1 mil­lion, as of Sep­tem­ber 2024.

Since then, TTUTC has since strength­ened its re­gion­al foot­print. “Less than a year lat­er, we en­tered the St. Lu­cian mar­ket with the UTC GBFL. I am ex­cit­ed to share that the GBFL has de­liv­ered re­turns to our in­vestors ex­ceed­ing ten per cent since its in­cep­tion, cou­pled with a re­mark­able in­ter­est, as sub­scrip­tions have dou­bled over the last three months,” he told his au­di­ence.

The launch cre­ates new op­por­tu­ni­ties for Vin­cen­tians to build fi­nan­cial se­cu­ri­ty through ac­ces­si­ble and ex­pert­ly man­aged in­vest­ment op­tions, high­light­ing TTUTC’s com­mit­ment to em­pow­er­ing in­di­vid­u­als with the tools and re­sources to achieve long-term fi­nan­cial growth.

As part of the en­gage­ment with its stake­hold­ers, a pan­el dis­cus­sion com­pris­ing Ed­wards, Crys­tal Rod­griguez-Greaves, chief in­vest­ment of­fi­cer, TTUTC, Deyson Scott, chief sales and mar­ket­ing of­fi­cer, and Omar Burch Smith, re­gion­al CIS man­ag­er, UTC Fund Man­age­ment Ser­vices, field­ed ques­tions from the au­di­ence that cov­ered a range of top­ics, in­clud­ing the per­for­mance out­look of UTC GBFL and how it adds val­ue to struc­tured in­vest­ment port­fo­lios.

The live­ly ex­change pro­vid­ed valu­able in­sights and gave at­ten­dees the op­por­tu­ni­ty to bet­ter un­der­stand how the UTC GBFL aligns with their in­vest­ment goals, while ad­dress­ing key con­cerns about mar­ket trends and risk.

Daren Sam­my, UTC GBFL brand am­bas­sador and crick­et icon, shared his per­spec­tive on fi­nan­cial dis­ci­pline and GBFL’s ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty. “The great thing is that you don’t need a for­tune to start, you don’t need to be an ex­pert to get in­volved. Just like in crick­et, every run counts, with in­vest­ments every dol­lar counts.”

UTC GBFL, a whol­ly-owned sub­sidiary of the T&T Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion, is an in­vest­ment com­pa­ny in­cor­po­rat­ed in St Lu­cia to op­er­ate as a Col­lec­tive In­vest­ment Scheme (CIS) in the East­ern Caribbean Cur­ren­cy Union.

TTUTC is the largest mu­tu­al fund ser­vice provider in the re­gion, with Funds Un­der Man­age­ment, as at De­cem­ber 31, 2023, to­talling $24.5 bil­lion (ap­prox US$3.6 bil­lion).