Crowe Howarth Enters Local Financial Services Market

International auditing and business consulting firm Crowe Howarth will be opening two offices in the country—one in Port of Spain, Trinidad and another in Scarborough, Tobago.

“As a professional service, we provide business solutions recognising that the country (has) challenges. We have the capability to assist,” Dawkins Brown, the company’s managing partner for the Caribbean told the audience on Tuesday during the official launch at the Trinidad Hilton and Conference Centre, St Ann’s.

The company recognises this country has a kind of resilience for growth despite going through some “choppy waters,” he said, but the country’s problems are not localised, and Crowe Howarth is an international firm, so it had the capability to leverage that global network to help its local clients.

He said small and medium enterprises will be able to access the firm’s services through a special pricing strategy that will be based on their existing structure and growth projections, and not just capital.

The company’s operations here will focus on knowledge transfer and human resource capacity building, borrowing from the international network to train local staff, he added.

Brown said he expected the two offices to have a staff of just over 40, with at least 30 per cent of that being recent university graduates who will also be able to access opportunities to work in other territories in which the company operates.

Also attending the launch were Minister of Trade and Industry Paula Gopee-Scoon and Port of Spain Mayor Joel Martinez, both of whom congratulated the company on its new local operations, saying it was a sign of economic growth and business confidence in the country.

The company will be ramping up its operations over the next four weeks, and has “integrated” local consulting firm Premier Consulting Group as its local partner. Brown said over the coming weeks the company will announce the core members of the local team.

Crowe Howarth is the eighth biggest accounting firm in the world. It operates in 130 territories including Caribbean markets like Jamaica, Barbados, Dominican Republic and Curacao.