The an­nounce­ment on June 30, 2025 by IDB In­vest to sub­scribe to $250 mil­lion in so­cial bonds is­sued by T&T Mort­gage Bank Ltd (TTMB), in part­ner­ship with Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd (RBL), marks the first time in the Caribbean such fi­nanc­ing is tar­get­ting women.

This ini­tia­tive is not just a fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tion—it’s a strate­gic in­ter­ven­tion aimed at re­shap­ing ac­cess to home­own­er­ship for un­der­served pop­u­la­tions.

What makes this project par­tic­u­lar­ly ground­break­ing is its ex­plic­it fo­cus on sup­port­ing women and women-led fam­i­lies, a de­mo­graph­ic of­ten left be­hind by tra­di­tion­al fi­nan­cial sys­tems.

The funds would en­able the TTMB to ex­pand its mort­gage port­fo­lio, fo­cussing on mid­dle and low­er mid­dle-in­come fam­i­lies, as well as women and women-led house­holds.

The IDB ex­plained the trans­ac­tion was made through the sub­scrip­tion of se­nior se­cured so­cial bonds in a Se­ries 1, pro­vid­ing TTMB with long-term fi­nanc­ing while sup­port­ing the de­vel­op­ment of T&T’s lo­cal cap­i­tal mar­kets.

The bonds ad­here to the So­cial Bond Prin­ci­ples of the In­ter­na­tion­al Cap­i­tal Mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion (IC­MA).

His­tor­i­cal­ly, the IDB not­ed cit­i­zens with­in these in­come lev­els con­tin­ue to face gaps in ac­cess­ing cred­it from fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

Fur­ther, it stat­ed women are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly af­fect­ed due to bar­ri­ers in ac­cess­ing cred­it, pay gaps, and the fi­nan­cial bur­den of lead­ing one-third of house­holds, in­creas­ing their risk of home­less­ness and in­se­cu­ri­ty.

The Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian reached out to the TTMB’s act­ing CEO Brent McFee who shared fur­ther de­tails.

“The TTMB is­sued Se­ries 1 of a So­cial Se­cured Bond in the sum of $250 mil­lion. The to­tal bond to be is­sued is $550 mil­lion of which Se­ries 2 of the bond in the amount of $300 mil­lion is cur­rent­ly in progress. The bond has a the­mat­ic la­bel of so­cial bonds fol­low­ing the So­cial Bond Prin­ci­ples of the In­ter­na­tion­al Cap­i­tal Mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion. The full pro­ceeds of the bond will be used for the orig­i­na­tion of mort­gages to low- and mid­dle-in­come house­holds with a min­i­mum of 50 per cent ($275 mil­lion) of those pro­ceeds of the bond be­ing used to pro­vide ac­cess to mort­gage fi­nance for women-owned and women-led first time home­own­ers,” he said.

De­scrib­ing this as a pi­o­neer­ing mo­ment for the TTMB, McFee said the $550 mil­lion So­cial Bond with an added gen­der fo­cus, has a few dis­tinc­tions:

• It is the first so­cial bond with a gen­der fo­cus, in­creas­ing the ac­cess to mort­gage fi­nance for women owned and women led first time home­own­ers;

• It is the sec­ond so­cial bond in T&T and Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean, sec­ond on­ly to the first so­cial bond is­sued by its sub­sidiary, Home Mort­gage Bank;

• It is the sec­ond lo­cal cur­ren­cy so­cial bond is­sued in T&T cap­i­tal mar­kets un­der In­ter­na­tion­al Cap­i­tal Mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion stan­dards;

• It is the sec­ond so­cial bond is­sued with a sec­ond par­ty opin­ion from S&P;

• It is the sec­ond so­cial bond with TTSEC’s ap­proval, but the first with the In­spec­tor of Fi­nan­cial In­sti­tu­tions ap­proval for in­clu­sion in statu­to­ry funds;

On whether mort­gage rates would like­ly be re­duced for women, McFee said in un­der­stand­ing that each per­son’s cir­cum­stance is dif­fer­ent and the so­lu­tion is not like­ly to be a one size fits all, in May 2025, the TTMB em­barked on host­ing a num­ber of fo­cus groups con­duct­ed through­out T&T.

This, he said, is aimed at get­ting feed­back from women on the chal­lenges they face in ob­tain­ing cred­it and to gath­er in­for­ma­tion from their per­spec­tive on what their mort­gage fi­nanc­ing needs are, and what are their de­sired cri­te­ria for their fi­nanc­ing needs .

He said the analy­sis of the re­sults of these ses­sions is un­der­way, adding those re­sults would guide the TTMB’s cus­tomer-cen­tric ap­proach in de­sign­ing an ap­pro­pri­ate strat­e­gy along with broad pa­ra­me­ters for a suit­able prod­uct.

This would then be fur­ther tai­lored to suit each ap­pli­cant.

On what per­cent­age of the mort­gage port­fo­lio is ear­marked for women and women-led house­holds, McFee said the pro­ceeds of the bond would be used for the orig­i­na­tion of mort­gages to low- and mid­dle-in­come house­holds with a min­i­mum of 50 per cent of the pro­ceeds of the bond be­ing used to fi­nance women and women-led mort­gages.

Ad­vis­ing on the qual­i­fy­ing in­come for this par­tic­u­lar seg­ment to ac­cess a mort­gage, McFee said the TTMB would use the Gov­ern­ment’s af­ford­able hous­ing fi­nanc­ing regime (two and five per cent ) as the base for this ini­tia­tive.

The in­come brack­et for this pro­gramme is a max­i­mum of $14,000 month­ly to ac­cess the two per cent in­ter­est rate for prop­er­ty val­ues of $1 mil­lion and less. To ac­cess the five in­ter­est rate the max­i­mum month­ly in­come is $30,000 and the max­i­mum prop­er­ty val­ue is $1.5 mil­lion, McFee added.

Not­ing that the pa­ra­me­ters of the prod­uct geared to­wards fe­male and fe­male-led house­holds have not yet been fi­nalised McFee, how­ev­er, said the da­ta ob­tained from the re­search would in­form the prod­uct to be de­vel­oped which would be pre­dom­i­nant­ly geared to­wards ad­dress­ing the in­clu­sion of any un­der­served mem­bers of the fe­male pop­u­la­tion, who are un­able to qual­i­fy un­der cur­rent pro­grammes and to bridge any gaps that may be iden­ti­fied.

What is the ex­pect­ed num­ber of homes to be fi­nanced?

He said the num­ber of homes to be fi­nanced would be de­pen­dent on the val­ue of the mort­gages that are grant­ed util­is­ing the pro­ceeds of the bond.

Broad­er hous­ing pol­i­cy ob­jec­tive

The Gov­ern­ment has sig­nalled its ef­forts to close the gap in the sup­ply of af­ford­able hous­ing .

This was al­so echoed by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar SC, when she stat­ed that there would be a fo­cus on women as out­lined in the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’s 2025 man­i­festo in which the she said, “...women are the back­bone of our so­ci­ety, and fam­i­lies are the heart of our na­tion. Our plan fo­cus­es on im­prov­ing health­care ser­vices, en­sur­ing safe­ty and pro­tec­tion for women, and cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for eco­nom­ic in­de­pen­dence. We will in­vest in pro­grams that sup­port work­ing moth­ers, ad­dress gen­der-based vi­o­lence, and pro­mote equal rights. Strong fam­i­lies cre­ate strong com­mu­ni­ties, and to­geth­er, we’ll build a fu­ture where every woman and fam­i­ly can thrive.”

In this re­gard McFee main­tained the TTMB con­tin­ues to play a sig­nif­i­cant role in ad­min­is­ter­ing the af­ford­able hous­ing pro­gramme on Gov­ern­ment’s be­half adding he was of the view that this ini­tia­tive is ful­ly aligned.

Align­ment with goals

As TTMB im­ple­ments and ex­pands its ESG agen­da, the bond is­suance aligns with the S in ESG, as it is al­so in­ti­mate­ly aligned with the Unit­ed Na­tion’s Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals (SDGs) as it would pro­mote gen­der equal­i­ty and women’s eco­nom­ic em­pow­er­ment, there­by re­duc­ing pover­ty and in­equal­i­ties, McFee said.

“At the TTMB, we recog­nise that our com­mit­ment to gen­der equal­i­ty ex­tends be­yond hous­ing fi­nance. We have tak­en de­fin­i­tive steps to weave gen­der con­sid­er­a­tions in­to every facet of our op­er­a­tions. One of our proud­est achieve­ments was be­com­ing a reg­is­tered sig­na­to­ry of the UN Women & UN Glob­al Com­pact Women’s Em­pow­er­ment Prin­ci­ples in Au­gust 2024 – one of on­ly four lo­cal com­pa­nies to at­tain this des­ig­na­tion. This ini­tia­tive is just one of the steps which we have tak­en to en­sure that all em­ploy­ees (women and men) are treat­ed fair­ly at work with­out dis­crim­i­na­tion,” McFee ex­plained.

Long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty

Speak­ing to the long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty of this fi­nanc­ing mode, McFee said TTMB is com­mit­ted to be­com­ing the pre­mier provider of di­verse and in­no­v­a­tive prop­er­ty fi­nance and in­vest­ment prod­ucts, em­pow­er­ing its cus­tomers to build gen­er­a­tional wealth through home­own­er­ship.

“Our pur­pose is clear – Cre­at­ing Gen­er­a­tional Wealth through Re­al Es­tate for the well-be­ing of our peo­ple. Home­own­er­ship is a cat­a­lyst to build­ing wealth, and in­no­v­a­tive prod­uct so­lu­tions are key to en­abling ac­cess to af­ford­able, low-cost hous­ing. In this con­text, we want to en­sure that we build aware­ness of our fi­nan­cial so­lu­tions, with the un­der­stand­ing that every dol­lar in­vest­ed with TTMB goes to­wards the de­vel­op­ment of the econ­o­my of T&T,” he said.

He added the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s strat­e­gy in­cludes build­ing a port­fo­lio of ESG As­sets and our part­ner­ship with the IDB In­vest pro­vides an op­por­tu­ni­ty to har­ness their glob­al ex­per­tise in de­sign­ing such unique fund­ing/in­vest­ment in­stru­ments.