The JMMB Group yes­ter­day re­port­ed dou­ble dig­it growth in its loans port­fo­lio which group risk man­ag­er Damion Brown said was the re­sult of the re­brand­ing ex­er­cise that fol­lowed its ac­qui­si­tion of In­ter­com­mer­cial Bank Lim­it­ed.

Brown was part of a pan­el dis­cussing the eco­nom­ic chal­lenges fac­ing T&T host­ed by the JMMB Group and the lo­cal chap­ter of the Glob­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Risk Pro­fes­sion­als (GARP) at the Court­yard Mar­riott in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

"We have been see­ing an in­crease in our loan port­fo­lio, a unique po­si­tion as the mar­ket re­sponds to our favourable of­fer­ings," he said.

On the mat­ter of de­fault­ing cus­tomers, Brown said: "For our port­fo­lio we have seen in­creas­es in de­faults but you do ex­pect, as the econ­o­my ad­justs, that some cus­tomers de­spite your best ef­fort will get in­to an un­sus­tain­able sit­u­a­tion and we willl have in place mech­a­nisms to try and work that out as best as pos­si­ble."

While ex­pert­sare pre­dict­ing that the US Fed­er­al Re­serve will in­crease in­ter­est rates, Brown does not ex­pect this to re­sult in in­creased rates in T&T

GARP is the world's lead­ing pro­fes­sion­al as­so­ci­a­tion for risk prac­ti­tion­ers. It ad­min­is­ters the Fi­nan­cial Risk Man­ag­er (FRM) des­ig­na­tion, the glob­al­ly rec­og­nized stan­dard for fi­nan­cial risk prac­ti­tion­ers. It is a pre-em­i­nent source of in­for­ma­tion, dis­cus­sion and analy­sis of risk re­lat­ed mat­ters.

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