Cor­ner­stone Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd yes­ter­day re­ceived an ini­tial is­suer/cor­po­rate cred­it rat­ings of CariBBB (for­eign cur­ren­cy rat­ing) and CariBBB+ (lo­cal cur­ren­cy rat­ing) on the re­gion­al rat­ing scale from the rat­ing agency, Caribbean In­for­ma­tion and Cred­it Rat­ing Ser­vices (Cari­cris).

Cor­ner­stone Fi­nan­cial is a pri­vate­ly held Ja­maican com­pa­ny that has a re­la­tion­ship with T&T’s ma­jor­i­ty State-owned First Cit­i­zens, was as­signed jmA- (for­eign cur­ren­cy rat­ing) and jmA (lo­cal cur­ren­cy rat­ing) on the Ja­maica na­tion­al rat­ing scale

Cari­cris ex­plained that the re­gion­al scale rat­ings in­di­cate that the lev­el of cred­it­wor­thi­ness of this oblig­or, ad­judged in re­la­tion to oth­er oblig­ors in the Caribbean, is ad­e­quate.

The na­tion­al scale rat­ings in­di­cate that the lev­el of cred­it­wor­thi­ness of this oblig­or, ad­judged in re­la­tion to oth­er oblig­ors in Ja­maica is good.

Cari­cris has al­so as­signed a sta­ble out­look on the rat­ings.

“The sta­ble out­look is based on our ex­pec­ta­tion that over the next 12 to 15 months, CFHL will con­tin­ue to record prof­itable op­er­a­tions dri­ven by in­come from its sub­sidiaries, though at a low­er lev­el, un­der­pinned by the per­for­mance of its main per­form­ing sub­sidiary, Bari­ta In­vest­ments Ltd,” the rat­ing agency ex­plained.

First Cit­i­zens In­vest­ment Ser­vices, a 100-per cent owned sub­sidiary of First Cit­i­zens Group Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings, is the sec­ond largest share­hold­er of Bari­ta In­vest­ments with 7.43 per cent.

Cor­ner­stone Fi­nan­cial is the largest in­vestor in Bari­ta In­vest­ments, which is a pub­licly list­ed com­pa­ny in Ja­maica, own­ing 75.16 per cent of the com­pa­ny.

Cari­cris added that it al­so ex­pects Cor­ner­stone Fi­nan­cial to com­fort­ably meet its debt ser­vice oblig­a­tions over this pe­ri­od and main­tain good cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion and liq­uid­i­ty met­rics.

It fur­ther not­ed that the rat­ings are sup­port­ed by Cor­ner­stone Fi­nan­cial be­ing a rel­a­tive­ly new but emerg­ing in­vest­ment hold­ing com­pa­ny of one of Ja­maica’s well-known stock­bro­kers, with ad­e­quate gov­er­nance struc­ture and risk man­age­ment prac­tices.

Ac­cord­ing to Cari­cris, the rat­ings are al­so dri­ven by good prof­itabil­i­ty, un­der­pinned by Bari­ta In­vest­ment’s op­er­a­tions, con­sis­tent as­set growth, de­spite lit­tle di­ver­si­ty in the in­vest­ment port­fo­lio, as well as gen­er­al­ly good cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion and liq­uid­i­ty lev­els.

The rat­ings are tem­pered by the high de­pen­dence on Bari­ta In­vest­ments and the con­cen­trat­ed sov­er­eign risk ex­po­sure which can present down­side risks to CFHL’s earn­ings.

In March this year, the Bank of Ja­maica (BOJ) gave Cor­ner­stone Unit­ed Hold­ings Ja­maica Ltd the green-light to pro­ceed with a pro­posed re­or­gan­i­sa­tion of its fi­nan­cial group.

The BOJ had is­sued the no-ob­jec­tion let­ter on March 10, which was signed by Bank of Ja­maica Gov­er­nor Richard Byles stat­ing that its su­per­vi­so­ry com­mit­tee had no ob­jec­tion to the re­or­gan­i­sa­tion of the group.

While Cor­ner­stone Fi­nan­cial owns 75 per cent of Bari­ta, its sis­ter com­pa­ny, Cor­ner­stone Unit­ed Hold­ings Ja­maica Ltd, owns 100 per cent of Cor­ner­stone Trust and Mer­chant Bank.

Cor­ner­stone Unit­ed Hold­ings Ja­maica Ltd is a pri­vate­ly held in­vest­ment hold­ing com­pa­ny whose share­hold­ers are cap­tains of in­dus­try across the Caribbean. Its prin­ci­pal fo­cus is cre­at­ing share­hold­er val­ue through in­vest­ing in high growth and un­der­val­ued com­pa­nies, merg­ers and ac­qui­si­tions.

Cor­ner­stone Fi­nan­cial’s founder, pres­i­dent and CEO is Paul Simp­son, who is al­so the chair­man of the com­pa­ny.