An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Wiz­dom­CRM is putting ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and sim­u­lat­ed stock trad­ing in­to the hands of Caribbean work­ers, stu­dents and po­ten­tial in­vestors as Cari­com moves clos­er to ex­am­in­ing a re­gion­al stock ex­change.

The Cari­com Stock Mar­ket AI Game will cov­er the stocks mar­kets in T&T, Ja­maica, Guyana, Bar­ba­dos and the East­ern Caribbean Se­cu­ri­ties Ex­change, al­low­ing users to re­search com­pa­nies, analyse sec­tors and build sim­u­lat­ed port­fo­lios across sev­er­al re­gion­al mar­kets.

The ini­tia­tive is be­ing de­vel­oped with the sup­port of the Cari­com Pri­vate Sec­tor Or­gan­i­sa­tion (CP­SO) and forms part of its 2026-2027 work pro­gramme.

It comes as the CP­SO ex­am­ines the fea­si­bil­i­ty of es­tab­lish­ing a re­gion­al stock ex­change, an ob­jec­tive linked to the wider push for deep­er cap­i­tal-mar­ket in­te­gra­tion un­der the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my.

For the Caribbean, Wiz­dom­CRM and CP­SO in­di­cat­ed that the is­sue is not on­ly whether re­gion­al ex­changes can even­tu­al­ly be con­nect­ed. It is al­so whether busi­ness­es, work­ers and in­vestors have the knowl­edge to par­tic­i­pate when greater in­te­gra­tion takes place.

The game, the two bod­ies said, is in­tend­ed to ad­dress that gap be­fore the re­gion­al mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture is com­plet­ed.

Users will re­ceive a US$50,000 vir­tu­al ac­count and will be able to con­duct sim­u­lat­ed trades us­ing re­al-time mar­ket in­for­ma­tion. The plat­form in­cludes a vir­tu­al or­der-man­age­ment sys­tem with trans­ac­tions set­tled in US dol­lars and pro­vides users with ac­cess to mar­ket re­search and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence tools.

The AI com­po­nent can be used to re­search com­pa­nies and sec­tors, as­sess in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and con­struct port­fo­lios across the Trinidad and To­ba­go, Bar­ba­dos, Guyana and OECS mar­kets.

In an in­ter­view with Busi­ness Guardian on Tues­day, Wiz­dom­CRM coun­try man­ag­er Charielle Plow­den said the ini­tia­tive aims to move fi­nan­cial ed­u­ca­tion be­yond the­o­ry and to give peo­ple prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence in re­gion­al mar­kets.

“We have proved the mod­el with 17,000 stu­dents across six Caribbean coun­tries. The next co­hort is the Caribbean work­force,” Plow­den said.

That work­force in­cludes em­ploy­ees who may have lit­tle or no di­rect ex­pe­ri­ence with in­vest­ing.

Rather than lim­it­ing the plat­form to in­di­vid­ual users, Wiz­dom­CRM plans to al­low com­pa­nies to use it as part of em­ploy­ee fi­nan­cial-well­ness and hu­man-cap­i­tal pro­grammes. Em­ploy­ers will be able to or­gan­ise in­vest­ment com­pe­ti­tions, with work­ers form­ing teams, re­search­ing com­pa­nies and build­ing vir­tu­al port­fo­lios.

The li­cences will be avail­able to or­gan­i­sa­tions at no cost through the end of 2026 as part of the ini­tial roll­out.

Build­ing in­vestors

The tim­ing of the ini­tia­tive is sig­nif­i­cant be­cause the pro­posed re­gion­al stock ex­change is in­tend­ed to do more than cre­ate a com­mon trad­ing plat­form.

A more in­te­grat­ed re­gion­al mar­ket could give Caribbean busi­ness­es greater ac­cess to cap­i­tal, in­crease the vis­i­bil­i­ty of com­pa­nies across bor­ders and pro­vide in­vestors with more op­por­tu­ni­ties to de­ploy sav­ings with­in the re­gion.

For mi­cro, small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es in par­tic­u­lar, ac­cess to cap­i­tal re­mains a crit­i­cal is­sue.

Dr Patrick An­toine, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer and tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor of the CP­SO, said a re­gion­al ex­change should be viewed in terms of its po­ten­tial im­pact on busi­ness­es and house­holds, rather than sim­ply as a tech­nol­o­gy or trad­ing project.

“A re­gion­al stock ex­change can­not be viewed sim­ply as an ex­er­cise in con­nect­ing trad­ing in­fra­struc­ture,” An­toine said.

He said the big­ger op­por­tu­ni­ty was to cre­ate stronger av­enues for Caribbean busi­ness­es, in­clud­ing MSMEs, to ac­cess cap­i­tal and be­come more vis­i­ble to in­vestors.

“The re­al op­por­tu­ni­ty is to deep­en par­tic­i­pa­tion: mo­bil­is­ing Caribbean sav­ings, widen­ing ac­cess to in­vest­ment, strength­en­ing the vis­i­bil­i­ty of re­gion­al busi­ness­es, and en­sur­ing that our peo­ple have the knowl­edge and the con­fi­dence to share in the cre­ation of re­gion­al wealth.”

The AI game is be­ing po­si­tioned as a prepara­to­ry tool while the in­sti­tu­tion­al and reg­u­la­to­ry work around re­gion­al cap­i­tal-mar­ket in­te­gra­tion con­tin­ues.

The plat­form com­bines fi­nan­cial ed­u­ca­tion, mar­ket in­tel­li­gence and sim­u­lat­ed trad­ing, al­low­ing users to gain ex­pe­ri­ence with­out putting re­al mon­ey at risk.

That dis­tinc­tion is im­por­tant. The game is not a sub­sti­tute for reg­u­lat­ed in­vest­ment ad­vice, bro­ker­age ser­vices or the in­fra­struc­ture need­ed to op­er­ate an in­te­grat­ed re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ties mar­ket.

In­stead, its pur­pose is to cre­ate a pool of peo­ple who un­der­stand how mar­kets work and are bet­ter pre­pared to par­tic­i­pate when op­por­tu­ni­ties arise.

Five mar­kets

The plat­form will ex­pose users to five re­gion­al ex­changes, giv­ing them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to com­pare com­pa­nies and sec­tors across dif­fer­ent Caribbean economies.

For uni­ver­si­ties, the sys­tem can be used to con­nect fi­nance, en­tre­pre­neur­ship, da­ta and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence with prac­ti­cal mar­ket ex­er­cis­es.

For fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, bro­kers and in­vest­ment hous­es, it can help build a pipeline of peo­ple who are more fa­mil­iar with se­cu­ri­ties mar­kets be­fore they be­come re­tail in­vestors.

List­ed com­pa­nies can al­so ben­e­fit from greater pub­lic un­der­stand­ing of their op­er­a­tions and the sec­tors in which they com­pete.

Plow­den said the ini­tia­tive will re­quire par­tic­i­pa­tion from across the fi­nan­cial ecosys­tem rather than be­ing dri­ven by one com­pa­ny.

“CP­SO is unique­ly po­si­tioned to bring to­geth­er the pri­vate sec­tor, ex­changes, fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, reg­u­la­tors and list­ed com­pa­nies around this agen­da,” she said.

“Wiz­dom­CRM pro­vides the dig­i­tal ed­u­ca­tion, in­tel­li­gence and sim­u­la­tion lay­er but trans­for­ma­tion at this scale re­quires the en­tire mar­ket ecosys­tem.”

Plow­den not­ed that the ecosys­tem would al­so have to in­clude se­cu­ri­ties reg­u­la­tors, which re­main re­spon­si­ble for in­vestor pro­tec­tion, mar­ket in­tegri­ty and over­sight of the re­spon­si­ble use of tech­nol­o­gy in fi­nan­cial mar­kets.

The ex­changes she said would pro­vide mar­ket in­for­ma­tion and list­ed-com­pa­ny da­ta, while bro­kers, in­vest­ment hous­es and fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions would pro­vide the reg­u­lat­ed link be­tween ed­u­ca­tion and ac­tu­al in­vest­ment.

Work­force fo­cus

Wiz­dom­CRM is mak­ing the Caribbean work­force a ma­jor tar­get of the roll­out.

Com­pa­nies will be able to es­tab­lish in­ter­nal in­vest­ment com­pe­ti­tions, al­low­ing em­ploy­ees to work in teams and com­pete based on the per­for­mance of their vir­tu­al port­fo­lios.

The con­cept could al­so be­come part of em­ploy­ee fi­nan­cial-well­ness pro­grammes, giv­ing work­ers a struc­tured in­tro­duc­tion to in­vest­ing rather than re­ly­ing sole­ly on tra­di­tion­al fi­nan­cial-lit­er­a­cy ses­sions.

The ini­tial li­cences are be­ing of­fered free to or­gan­i­sa­tions through the end of 2026.

Wiz­dom­CRM is seek­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion from Caribbean com­pa­nies, fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, stock ex­changes, in­vest­ment hous­es, list­ed com­pa­nies, uni­ver­si­ties and oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions in­volved in fi­nan­cial ca­pa­bil­i­ty and cap­i­tal-mar­ket de­vel­op­ment.

The plat­form’s broad­er propo­si­tion is that the suc­cess of a re­gion­al stock ex­change will de­pend not on­ly on whether the in­fra­struc­ture is built, but al­so on whether Caribbean peo­ple and busi­ness­es are ready to use it.

An­toine said the ini­tia­tive could be­gin that prepa­ra­tion be­fore the re­gion­al mar­ket ar­chi­tec­ture is in place.

“By bring­ing to­geth­er ed­u­ca­tion, mar­ket in­tel­li­gence and sim­u­lat­ed par­tic­i­pa­tion, we can be­gin to pre­pare the ecosys­tem that a tru­ly in­te­grat­ed Caribbean cap­i­tal mar­ket will one day de­mand of us,” he said.

Both An­tonie and Plow­den added that for Cari­com, the longer-term ob­jec­tive is to deep­en cap­i­tal-mar­ket in­te­gra­tion, im­prove liq­uid­i­ty, mo­bilise in­vest­ment and broad­en ac­cess to cap­i­tal.

The AI game is be­ing in­tro­duced as one way of build­ing the hu­man ca­pac­i­ty need­ed to sup­port those goals.

Its im­me­di­ate fo­cus, how­ev­er, is prac­ti­cal: get­ting more Caribbean peo­ple fa­mil­iar with the com­pa­nies, mar­kets and in­vest­ment de­ci­sions that could even­tu­al­ly form part of a more in­te­grat­ed re­gion­al cap­i­tal mar­ket.