CEO’s Message
As a state agency, our fiscal year follows that of the Government and the July-September edition of the Quarterly always provides an opportunity for us to consider the last year of operations and simultaneously provide a roadmap for our upcoming trajectory.
Trinidad and Tobago International Financial Centre (T&T IFC) began this year on a wave of redefinition, which was critical in the previous period, given sea-changes in the international financial services industry – in the areas of FinTech and global moves to digitisation of financial services.
Therefore, the Company executed a series of targeted outreach activities pivoting around co-creating a new ‘brand essence’, through interaction with our respective stakeholders; internal, external, domestic and international alike – and complementary self-reflection. After this, the management team participated in a series of comprehensive workshops, aimed at focusing the insights gained from the stakeholders into reenergising our single-minded message by the middle of the year.
The T&T IFC reconciled that we are truly meant to be a ‘resourceful ally’ in all its meanings, and function in a role that is unique to Trinidad and Tobago, as no other Caribbean location has an agency quite like us. The T&T IFC exists to support economic transformation through development of the financial services sector which remains one of the key high-yield contributing sectors to our GDP. Investors and entrepreneurs in this sector, require representation by a special-interest agency, as their success redounds to the wider socio-economic landscape, as financial services impacts all other industries, and a technically robust supporting ecosystem is pivotal to ongoing international trade.
Throughout the rest of the year we took the time to learn how to express this new essence and have onboarded some new team members and consultants to support us in a streamlined rollout in the upcoming fiscal year. This has prepared us to add new value to each stakeholder and we have planned a laser-focused campaign to demonstrate to them individually and collectively how the T&T IFC can collaborate with them as a true value-added (resourceful) partner (ally). We maintain our call for them to join us in expanding the Finance and Accounting BPO/Shared Services (SS) industry, and making Trinidad and Tobago a FinTech-enabled hub, either by opening their own SS operations or joining the embryonic ‘T&T FinTech Association’, but with support every step of the way from the T&T IFC.
As we say goodbye to FY 2018–19, and herald in 2019–20, we are encouraged by signals from the stakeholders and the administration’s ongoing commitment to national development and truly making Trinidad and Tobago one of the premier locations in the Caribbean and Latin America for financial services.
Do enjoy the Quarterly.
