Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vice provider blink|bmo­bile and the T&T Mort­gage Fi­nance Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (TTMF) have signed an agree­ment that will en­able first-time home own­ers to en­joy greater peace of mind even as they en­joy the ben­e­fits of home own­er­ship.

Speak­ing at the of­fi­cial sign­ing of the TTMF and Blink Vig­i­lance part­ner­ship, ex­ec­u­tive VP�Gov­ern­ment and En­ter­prise Ser­vices, Rakesh Goswa­mi, said: "We see this part­ner­ship with TTMF as a nov­el way to get new home­own­ers start­ed on the right foot with peace of mind, and shift­ing the bur­den of wor­ry and risk on to those who con­tem­plate il­le­gal­ly breach­ing the bound­aries of a Blink Vig­i­lance pro­tect­ed prop­er­ty."

The agree­ment, which was signed at TSTT's Queen's Park Oval box, gives new home­own­ers who ac­quire mort­gages through TTMF the ben­e­fit of dis­count­ed Blinl Vig­i­lance pack­ages to se­cure their homes. TTMF's chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer Robert Green said the two com­pa­nies did a tri­al run of the pack­age deal in 2013.

"We now have a bet­ter ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the ben­e­fits of this se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem. The peace of mind that comes with know­ing that your home is be­ing mon­i­tored 24/7 with the sup­port of rapid re­sponse is un­de­ni­able," he said.Goswa­mi shared some sta­tis­tics that un­der­scored the need for and ben­e­fits of such a part­ner­ship.

"The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice on­line sta­tis­tics for bur­glar­ies, break-ins and lar­ce­ny at dwelling hous­es re­veal that over 400 in­ci­dents oc­curred per month in 2012, but that fig­ure en­cour­ag­ing­ly de­clined to 260 per month in 2013 and stands at 190 as the av­er­age for the first four months of this year," he said.

"In­ter­est­ing­ly over that same pe­ri­od Blink Vig­i­lance has be­come the fastest grow­ing alarm mon­i­tor­ing ser­vice in the coun­try and to date serves over 15,000 cus­tomers na­tion­wide." Goswa­mi em­pha­sised that the Blink Vig­i­lance pack­age is not com­pul­so­ry for home­own­ers tak­ing out a mort­gage with TTMF. How­ev­er, he added: "Vig­i­lance is af­ford­able and flex­i­ble enough to en­sure cus­tomers can get the lev­el of pro­tec­tion best suit­ed to their needs.

"From mon­i­tor­ing the key ac­cess points in a home and mo­tion sens­ing tech­nol­o­gy, to armed rapid re­sponse and am­bu­lance sup­port and even wear­able alarm trig­gers, Vig­i­lance places em­pha­sis on in­no­vat­ing to keep pace with cus­tomers' needs."

He al­so said the alarm mon­i­tor­ing com­mand cen­tre of Blink Vig­i­lance re­sponds to 15 alarm in­ci­dents every hour on av­er­age. Though all are not gen­uine emer­gen­cies, nu­mer­ous in­ter­ven­tions "have re­sult­ed in ar­rests, pro­vi­sion of med­ical as­sis­tance for cus­tomers or even chas­ing away would-be mis­cre­ants," Goswa­mi said.

Green said: "With this part­ner­ship we at TTMF have tru­ly achieved our mis­sion of mak­ing home own­er­ship an easy and re­ward­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. We firm­ly be­lieve that this part­ner­ship is a mu­tu­al­ly re­ward­ing one that will not on­ly ben­e­fit both in­sti­tu­tions, but more im­por­tant­ly, the end-user–our cus­tomers, who tru­ly are the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of this part­ner­ship."