The science of UTC

GROWING UP, Nigel Edwards wanted to be an engineer.

“Every long school vacation I would work in an electronics shop repairing televisions and video cassette recorders. I really loved electronics and that would have been my preferred career,” he told Business Day at his tenth floor office at the Unit Trust Corporation’s Independence Square, Port of Spain headquarters.

“But,” he chuckled, “I liked the sciences more than the sciences liked me.” He did, however, have an aptitude for business, and as the UTC’s new executive director, switching his passions from engineering to business management and finance appears to have worked out.

Edwards spoke with Business Day on Monday, 25 days since his official appointment to the top management spot at one of the country’s biggest financial institutions.

“I have a real sense of identification with the UTC. It’s a service-oriented enterprise and I love that about it. It has a reputation of being one of the most customer oriented organisations in TT and that’s the feedback I get from people,” he said.

Being of service is a big part of Edward’s personality, which is why he feels at home at the UTC, where before taking over the top job, he was the chief financial officer for five years, since August 2013.

“I remember during A’Levels, we were without an accounts teacher for a while because she was on maternity leave, so I taught the class or whoever was interested,” he said. “In fact, I met a former classmate recently and she reminded me that I did that for the economics class too.”

He brings that sense of service with him to the UTC — and to state oil company Petrotrin’s board, where he serves as a director. “I think it’s important to serve wherever you are. If I were to think of myself even in the context of the UTC executive director, I genuinely don’t view it as the ultimate position; it really is a position of being in service to the people who rely on me, starting with unitholders and then my teams,” he said.

A former national scholarship winner, Edwards, 47, graduated from the University of the West Indies in 1993 with a Bachelor’s degree in management. His first job was at the Ministry of Finance, during what he describes as “an interesting time”, including the formation of First Citizens Bank and the floatation of the dollar. After two years, he went on to study for his Master’s degree in finance at the London Business School, and returned to Trinidad, where he returned to the ministry briefly, before moving to the private sector. He spent the bulk of his career at the Ansa McAl Group, working at the Ansa Merchant Bank, and then at Tatil, before moving, in a sense, back to the public service, to the UTC.

Living up to the legacy

The UTC was incorporated in 1981 by an Act of Parliament, with a mandate to “foster a culture of saving and investment through education and innovative solutions that allow everyone access to the capital markets.” The aim was to make access to investment opportunities more open and available to the average citizen. The corporation has 600,000 unitholders, and $21 billion in funds under management, which Edwards says is about 25 per cent of the total savings in TT.

“To me, those are really significant numbers, so I feel the corporation has done a very good job giving access to the average citizen to investment opportunities and products they ordinarily wouldn’t have access to. We’ve done a really good job at that and so I think we’ve fulfilled the mandate.”

He said people have confidence in the UTC because there’s 35 years of history and experience that tells them they can be confident. “I look at the competent history of the people who have led the corporation, and they have had a genuine interest in the success of the company.”

Another part of the mandate is financial literacy, and the corporation has worked hard to expand its reach to educate people all over the country about how to invest and the benefits of investing.

“The very reason for the Unit Trust’s existence is to improve financial literacy and give people access to things they wouldn’t normally have, like access to the stock market,” he said. It’s not uncommon, then, for people to walk into a UTC branch with no clue what to do, but that’s what Edwards and his team are there for. “People come in without really understanding what they need to do; sometimes they don’t even understand the difference between investing and saving, an important distinction. We work with them to achieve their goals, depending on their stage in life.”

Another important focus for the company is the next wave of growth in TT, Edwards said, and where that is going to come from. “There are still investment opportunities in TT,” even as he noted that the trust’s asset base hasn’t grown in five years — although it hasn’t fallen either.

“We’re comfortable with that. The role of CFO is financial control, financial planning and direction. We focused a lot on financial control and financial planning and looked over the last five years. We’ve certainly looked at building the internal braces, including cost control and balance sheet management over the last five years. That has now brought us to a place of even greater stability.”

Asked if the economic climate contributed to the stagnation in funds under management, Edwards acknowledged that over that period of time (when TT struggled with economic growth) the local savings environment also did not grow — and by extension, savings at the UTC also would have held constant.

The corporation has had 35 solid years under its belt, and now it is poised for a “breathe in” phase of growth for funds under management. “That’s principally going to be our focus for the next few years — growing our funds under management and continuing to evolve our products to be the ones our nation needs.”

Among new growth opportunities that the UTC is interested in exploring is entrepreneurship and innovation. The corporation has created partnerships with chambers of commerce and the TT Stock Exchange to encourage entrepreneurs, especially in the technology sector, to take advantage of opportunities to attract investors, for example, the junior stock exchange.

“The junior stock exchange has been in existence for seven years now without a single company accessing it. We want to work with chambers and the TTSE so people who need capital will use these tools; once they access markets like that then we can move in and invest. That’s where we see ourselves being useful as facilitating investment growth,” Edwards said.

Ultimately, it’s about creating value for the unitholder, and that’s what Edwards hopes will be part of his contribution to the UTC legacy.

“What do I want people to know?” he asked. “To our unitholders, I want to deliver better returns in an environment of safety that will keep their investment secure. Creating value for our unitholders is priority number one.”