April 30, 2021
Caribbean Information and Credit Rating Services Limited (CariCRIS) today held the official launch of a branch office in New Kingston, Jamaica, this being the Company’s first office outside of its home country, Trinidad and Tobago.
At the launch event, which was entirely virtual and attended by over 100 CEOs and Senior Executives of the financial services industry in Jamaica, addresses were made by: the Honourable Minister of Finance and the Public Service, Dr Nigel Clarke; the Governor of the Bank of Jamaica, Mr Richard Byles; the Director of the Office of Stakeholder Management, Communication and International Relations at the Financial Services Commission, Mr David Geddes (on behalf of the Executive Director, Mr Everton McFarlane); the President of the Jamaica Securities Dealers Association, Mr Steven Gooden; CariCRIS’ Chairman, Mr Gregory Thomson; and CariCRIS’ CEO, Mr Wayne Dass.
The Honourable Minister, in his address, spoke about the importance of independent credit ratings as a critical input in the ongoing development and modernisation of the country’s financial sector legislation and welcomed the onsite presence of CariCRIS in Jamaica. This view was highly endorsed by all the other speakers, who spoke to, inter alia, the use of ratings in: capital adequacy determination for Deposit Taking Institutions (Basel 3); the formation of High Quality Liquid Assets for liquidity management; and widening the pool of allowable investment assets for insurance companies and pension funds.
CariCRIS’ Chairman, Mr Gregory Thomson, in his contribution said that over the past 15 years, CariCRIS has made good progress in establishing itself as a truly indigenous regional capital market development institution. He stated that CariCRIS is now formally approved as a recognized credit rating agency and an external credit assessment institution in the Caribbean. To date, CariCRIS has completed over 1,000 ratings of Sovereign, Corporate and SME entities in the Caribbean and its ratings have been successfully utilized in large sovereign and corporate debt issues, to the order of USD3.4 billion.
The Chairman also said that over the past 3 years, following from the timely and impactful changes in financial sector legislation in Jamaica, CariCRIS has focused on building out a national rating scale for Jamaica, with the objective of facilitating corporate issuers to raise money in the domestic market. He stated that this initiative has shown good success, and over the past 3 years the largest share of new ratings (47%) came from Jamaica, and in the last financial year ended March 31, 2021, Jamaica accounted for 63% of total new ratings.
CariCRIS’ CEO, Mr Wayne Dass, said that the tremendous progress made by the Government of Jamaica over the past two years in modernizing its financial sector legislation, has led to a material increase in the demand for CariCRIS’ credit rating services in that jurisdiction. Mr Dass explained that a key component of the revised riskbased regulations has been the increased use of independent credit ratings to lift transparency standards and drive proper price discovery in the financial markets. In explaining the rationale for the office in Jamaica, he said that “to properly respond to this increased demand and ensure we maintain the same high level of service that our clients are accustomed to, we have decided that an onsite presence in Jamaica by way of a small satellite office would serve us and our clients best.”
The event ended with an exciting virtual cutting of the ribbon and with CariCRIS’ CEO declaring that CariCRIS Jamaica is now open for business.