By Kimberly Ramkhalawan
January 13, 2023
Jamaica welcomed its newest asset management team to its playing field, this as Quantas Financial Group saw its official launch this week. Birthed from the desire to solve the need of more flexible capital and provide a diversified investment portfolio, it is also the brain child of former Scotia Bank Senior Vice President, Dr. Adrian Stokes, who is the Co-Founder and CEO.
According to Stokes, Quantas is looking to give investors the ability to invest in a vehicle that does securitization, while he defines his company as an alternative asset management business, through creating solutions for businesses to be in touch with capital, that can be trusted. In sharing the reasoning behind opening a brand like Quantas Financial, Stokes says for far too long there has been the need to solve two material problems in the Caribbean. The need to move away from traditional investment portfolios such as bonds, real estate, equity market, and traditional offerings, which only provided limited risk adjusted returns, as well as flexible capital without all the red flags.
His method, Stokes says Quantas targets those seeking intelligent capital, but most importantly, trusted capital, with core principles that ensures business is done the right way by placing customers at the heart of what they do. He added that asset management solutions at Quantas comes under three broad headings, structured products such as Quantas Advantage, something Stokes describes as being innovative and one he expects to transform the market for receivables and other contract cash flows in the Caribbean, Real Asset Solutions, which provides options that will flow into Strategic opportunity.
In explaining how the Investment process works at Quantas, Stokes says it applies itself by “trying to understand big macro themes, looking at the world and seeing where it is heading, going to particular markets and industries where it conducts detailed analysis, wrapping those opportunities with strong risk management principles with rigourous oversight, such as tackling concerns with inflation”
Introducing his high performance team as those who have been in the business for a long time, Stokes welcomed them onboard. Joining Stokes, is his former Scotiabank colleague, Scotia Jamaica Group President, Jacqueline Sharpe, who joins Quantas as Chairman. Sharpe in her opening remarks said while “startups might seem difficult, the team put together as experienced and focused and driven as this super team, the dream becomes a reality”. She added that her joining Quantas was a no-brainer under the stewardship of Dr.Stokes, as he has been described as one of the most brilliant minds in the Caribbean Financial world. Sharpe commended working with JMMB and Barita, for assisting them in bringing into brokerage their product, Quantas Advantage, which she described as being successful despite a challenging local market for raising capital.
A critical enabler she says is the development of its financial markets, if it is to foster economic growth locally and in the region. She adds that Quantas is driven by pursuit for some of the solutions for developmental challenges in the financial markets and in the region. She says their goal is to engineer solutions and bring ingenuity and scale while providing investors with solid and diverse opportunities throughout the year.
Judging from the response seen so far, Sharpe says “the launch of its products, the opportunities are ripe for the taking”, after having been pleased with the response from investors and the level of calls and queries from businesses looking for innovative funding.
Also present for the launch was Jamaica’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness, who described the launch of Quantas as a good signal for the Jamaican economy. Holness shared that it was “Financial intermediation is a good sign of a developing economy and a signal of increasing complexity in the economy. The more financial intermediation you get into the market place, the greater will be the allocation efficiency in your economy. Capital which is often stuck somewhere in an underperforming or under-utilized asset or in an asset class not doing what it could do now gets an opportunity to get unlocked and channeled into areas where it can yield greater results”.
He says it is happening because there is greater policy stability in the economy, as well as the regulatory environment, but more so an increasing demand for investment funds for infrastructure, construction for the real estate market, expansion of BPOs, and several other industries.
Holness remarked that this move generally paints a good picture for Jamaica, and also signals resurgence for his country, a regrowth and development of the country, which he says has started with the financial industry. The Jamaican PM added that when compared to its CARICOM counterparts, Jamaica currently has the strongest financial market, with businesses from Trinidad and Barbados looking on at its market to enter and participate. With that Holness suggested that Quantas look at the region as a marketplace to be served.
He added that Jamaica’s economy grew by 5.9 per cent in the third quarter of the financial year, which represents the sixth consecutive quarter of growth, despite the pandemic and increased living cost arising from shipping prices. However, he notes that it has recovered quickly and continues to grow.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister shared that Jamaica is looking to access the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s Resilience and Sustainable Facility (RSF) at a sum of US$763 million at an interest rate of approximately 3.8 per cent with a repayment period of 20 years, and no principal repayment for the first 10 years.
He sought to share that Jamaica has also taken consideration to taking up the IMF’s Precautionary and Liquidity Line (PLL), which only goes to countries that display fundamentals of an economy with signaled strengths. Though they have enough reserves, he says by doing this the government is continuing its policy of being prudent, which further strengthens the fiscal outlook and how the government is perceived, as well as how investors view current and future conditions. Holness added that in the event of any shocks to the economy, Jamaica has sufficient buffers in place to maintain stability, giving financial institutions like Quantas, added comfort.
The Quantas Financial Group is made up of three entities — Quantas Capital, Quantas Investments and Quantas Management, while its name is said to be derived from the Latin word ‘quantus;, which means, how great.