Bankers In­sur­ance Ltd is one of the lead­ing cor­po­rate bod­ies when it comes to as­sist­ing the coun­try's de­vel­op­ment through sport and they are now mak­ing some se­ri­ous in­vest­ments to en­sure that the na­tion's ath­letes take it to the next lev­el.

CEO of Bankers, Vance Gabriel ex­plained that the rea­son be­hind it was two fold: "We have two mis­sions, one is to raise our cor­po­rate pro­file and two, we need­ed to give back to the com­mu­ni­ty. The coun­try has been good to us and we de­cid­ed to give back.

Gabriel said: "There are many av­enues where cor­po­rate T&T could in­vest but where would you make the most im­pact? You see you are killing more birds with one stone when you in­vest in sport. It at­tracts youths and youths to­day are in per­il.

"There are not many op­por­tu­ni­ties for them and they need he­roes to look up to, all this you can get through sport.

He con­tin­ued: "We start­ed do­ing very lit­tle projects then Cen­tral FC came along. We were not look­ing at a small in­vest­ment here, we need­ed to change our ap­proach and due to what we had to in­vest to as­sist in this project, we need­ed board ap­proval, which we got.

"We knew what we were get­ting in­to, try­ing to fund a team in the Pro League is not a sim­ple thing, we came in for the long haul and we are with the team right through."

Bankers de­cid­ed to go with Cen­tral FC be­cause they were two fold, play­ing foot­ball but al­so do­ing a lot of com­mu­ni­ty work.

Gabriel said: "When we looked at it, Cen­tral FC was do­ing a lot of com­mu­ni­ty work, as­sist­ing in the fight against breast can­cer, as­sist­ing the Cyril Ross Home and oth­er things. We thought that with that an­gle, even if not foot­ball, we will get the ex­po­sure due to the com­mu­ni­ty work. We thought that the Pro League was not mar­ket­ing the foot­ball well, so we found ways to bring Bankers to the fore be­cause of our in­vest­ment.

"Of course, with Cen­tral FC win­ning ti­tles, this helped to in­spire pub­lic­i­ty and worked out nice­ly for us.

"When we were ap­proached by Cen­tral FC, we told them that win, lose or draw you can count on our sup­port. We made it clear that win­ning is not every­thing but it was more about how you con­duct­ed your­self," he said.

Cen­tral FC has been dom­i­nant in do­mes­tic foot­ball and reached their high­est point in their short his­to­ry when they ran out against LA Galaxy in the Con­ca­caf Club Cham­pi­onship. They went un­der 3�1 to the US team but did enough to keep their spon­sors hap­py.

"When the team went out there it brought im­mense joy to me. The fact that they were rep­re­sent­ing T&T in such a ma­jor tour­na­ment was so good for all of us. They did not win but I thought they ac­quit­ted them­selves well.

"We have to take the re­sult in­to per­spec­tive, it was our off sea­son and there was dif­fi­cul­ty in get­ting visas for some of the play­ers. They ar­rived just one day be­fore the game and with our new coach, he was meet­ing some of the play­ers for the first time just be­fore the game," Gabriel said.

Bankers is al­so mak­ing a ma­jor in­vest­ment in their in­au­gur­al half marathon.

"The Bankers half marathon is some­thing that has re­al­ly oc­cu­pied our at­ten­tion over the last few weeks. We start­ed off with one idea in terms of a bud­get and it has since es­ca­lat­ed to rough­ly five times the amount we en­vis­aged," he said.

"At this point in time, it has tak­en us up to half a mil­lion dol­lars. We want to do it right and we thought that since this is our first time we are not go­ing to spare any cost in get­ting it right.

"The ath­letes must have a great ex­pe­ri­ence in terms of the man­age­ment of the event and the re­wards and we are look­ing for­ward to mak­ing this an an­nu­al fix­ture on the lo­cal rac­ing cal­en­dar," Gabriel added.

Bankers has cre­at­ed his­to­ry of some sort in that they are giv­ing equal prize mon­ey to both male and fe­male win­ners. The men's win­ner will take away $12,000, while the fe­male win­ner al­so moves away with $12,000.

Apart from foot­ball and ath­let­ics, Bankers has al­so in­vest­ed in many oth­er small projects name­ly crick­et and has been as­sist­ing schools as well.

Gabriel said: "Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege came to us and need­ed help to make a trip to play foot­ball. When we heard of the prob­lems they were fac­ing we could not be­lieve that an in­sti­tu­tion like Pre­sen­ta­tion could not get help. We as­sist­ed with tick­ets and then re­alised that the guys need­ed spend­ing mon­ey for the tour. We could not al­low the guys to go out there and be in this sit­u­a­tion, so we took care of these bills in or­der that they fo­cus on what they re­al­ly went there for, which was foot­ball."

In the spir­it of giv­ing back to T&T, Bankers have not on­ly in­vest­ed in promi­nent ath­letes but oth­er cit­i­zens who want to give sports a try.

Gabriel said: "The Rain­bow Triathlon was staged a while ago and we got in­volved in as­sist­ing three young ladies get the ex­pe­ri­ence of thrill of sport. The three ladies want­ed to do some­thing out­side the com­fort zone and de­cid­ed to take part in the Rain­bow Triathlon. One ran, one swam and one did the cy­cling. They had nev­er done any­thing close to this, so we de­cid­ed to sup­port and in the end it was suc­cess­ful. It was all about help­ing some­one to achieve what they set out to.

"We at Bankers are there to as­sist but we al­ways say that we give to those to help them­selves. There must be some de­gree of buy-in. You meet us halfway and we will try our best to as­sist you," he said.