An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

For­eign ex­change short­ages, a lim­it­ed do­mes­tic mar­ket and the rapid rise of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence are forc­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go busi­ness­es to re­think how they com­pete. Busi­ness con­sul­tant Ger­ald Llanos be­lieves com­pa­nies that con­tin­ue re­ly­ing sole­ly on the lo­cal econ­o­my risk falling be­hind, ar­gu­ing that earn­ing for­eign cur­ren­cy over­seas and em­brac­ing ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­dence (AI) have be­come busi­ness ne­ces­si­ties rather than op­tion­al strate­gies.

Llanos, lead con­sul­tant at At­las Caribbean Cor­po­rate Ser­vices Ltd, ar­gues that busi­ness­es can no longer re­ly sole­ly on the do­mes­tic mar­ket or wait for the for­eign ex­change cri­sis to im­prove. In­stead, he be­lieves tech­nol­o­gy, par­tic­u­lar­ly AI, com­bined with in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pan­sion, of­fers com­pa­nies a prac­ti­cal path for­ward.

Speak­ing dur­ing an in­ter­view mark­ing At­las’ first an­niver­sary, Llanos said many busi­ness own­ers con­tin­ue to re­sist tech­no­log­i­cal change even as AI dra­mat­i­cal­ly al­ters how com­pa­nies op­er­ate and com­pete.

He main­tained that busi­ness­es em­brac­ing AI, while es­tab­lish­ing op­er­a­tions in over­seas mar­kets, will be bet­ter po­si­tioned to weath­er lo­cal eco­nom­ic chal­lenges.

The com­pa­ny op­er­ates from 182 South­ern Main Road, Dun­can Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do.

AI is chang­ing the rules of busi­ness

Llanos be­lieves many com­pa­nies are still un­der­es­ti­mat­ing how rapid­ly AI is trans­form­ing busi­ness op­er­a­tions.

He not­ed that the tech­nol­o­gy has evolved from be­ing pri­mar­i­ly a re­search tool in­to one that sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­proves pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and ex­e­cu­tion.

“What I can ex­e­cute in 24 hours now com­pared to what I could ex­e­cute in 2020 is to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent,” Llanos re­marked.

Be­fore join­ing At­las, Llanos spent two years ad­vo­cat­ing for re­spon­si­ble cor­po­rate AI adop­tion across T&T. That ex­pe­ri­ence con­vinced him that many busi­ness own­ers were un­nec­es­sar­i­ly re­sist­ing in­no­va­tion.

He urged en­tre­pre­neurs to em­brace AI rather than fear it.

“It’s the great­est learn­ing tool ever cre­at­ed. It’s al­so the great­est ex­e­cu­tion tool ever cre­at­ed,” Llanos stat­ed.

He sug­gest­ed that com­pa­nies com­bin­ing AI with in­ter­na­tion­al op­er­a­tions would have greater re­silience, point­ing out that a slow­down in the do­mes­tic econ­o­my would not nec­es­sar­i­ly af­fect rev­enues gen­er­at­ed in the Unit­ed States, Eu­rope, the Unit­ed King­dom or else­where in the Caribbean.

At­las is al­so po­si­tion­ing it­self as a le­gal tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny. Chief of staff and project man­ag­er Kadeen Sha­hadur said tech­nol­o­gy and AI will in­creas­ing­ly form part of the firm’s fu­ture projects.

She ac­knowl­edged that re­sis­tance to AI re­mains wide­spread, but be­lieves ed­u­ca­tion will grad­u­al­ly change pub­lic at­ti­tudes.

Sha­hadur ex­plained that At­las in­tends to pro­duce short-form ed­u­ca­tion­al con­tent across so­cial me­dia plat­forms to make AI eas­i­er for busi­ness­es to un­der­stand.

She al­so be­lieves com­pa­nies need to re­as­sure peo­ple that tech­nol­o­gy should com­ple­ment rather than re­place hu­man re­la­tion­ships.

“There is a very big bridge that we have to fill,” Sha­hadur ob­served, adding that ed­u­ca­tion­al events, livestreams and open dis­cus­sions would help busi­ness own­ers sep­a­rate ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion from mis­in­for­ma­tion sur­round­ing ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence.

Forex short­ages forc­ing glob­al think­ing

While AI presents op­por­tu­ni­ties, Llanos be­lieves T&T’s for­eign ex­change short­ages present one of the coun­try’s biggest com­mer­cial chal­lenges.

He point­ed to sev­er­al large com­pa­nies that have strug­gled to repa­tri­ate earn­ings be­cause of lim­it­ed US dol­lar avail­abil­i­ty.

Dig­i­cel, PriceS­mart and Pres­tige Hold­ings are among the firms he ref­er­enced as ex­am­ples of com­pa­nies that have ac­cu­mu­lat­ed sub­stan­tial T&T-dol­lar bal­ances while fac­ing dif­fi­cul­ties ac­cess­ing for­eign cur­ren­cy.

The chal­lenge ex­tends be­yond multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

Llanos ar­gues that many ex­porters, man­u­fac­tur­ers and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es face sim­i­lar con­straints as for­eign ex­change be­comes in­creas­ing­ly scarce.

He ex­pects the sit­u­a­tion to wors­en as de­clin­ing en­er­gy pro­duc­tion re­duces ex­port earn­ings and places ad­di­tion­al pres­sure on for­eign ex­change sup­plies.

As ex­port prod­ucts dis­ap­pear from the coun­try’s bal­ance sheet, he be­lieves the sup­ply-de­mand im­bal­ance will con­tin­ue grow­ing.

That means com­mer­cial banks can on­ly al­lo­cate the for­eign ex­change avail­able to them.

Rather than wait­ing for con­di­tions to im­prove, Llanos be­lieves busi­ness­es should fo­cus on gen­er­at­ing for­eign earn­ings them­selves.

“The so­lu­tion ul­ti­mate­ly is to earn in US dol­lars,” he stat­ed.

He en­cour­aged com­pa­nies to es­tab­lish in­ter­na­tion­al op­er­a­tions that en­able them to re­ceive for­eign rev­enue di­rect­ly rather than re­ly­ing en­tire­ly on T&T’s do­mes­tic econ­o­my.

Llanos ar­gued that the same en­tre­pre­neur­ial skills used to im­port and re­sell prod­ucts lo­cal­ly can be ap­plied in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Busi­ness­es can iden­ti­fy op­por­tu­ni­ties in mar­kets such as Pe­ru, Pana­ma the Unit­ed States and else­where, he sug­gest­ed.

He al­so warned busi­ness own­ers against at­tempt­ing in­for­mal or il­le­gal for­eign ex­change arrange­ments.

Fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions have be­come in­creas­ing­ly vig­i­lant over an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing and counter-ter­ror­ism fi­nanc­ing com­pli­ance, he not­ed, with banks pre­pared to close ac­counts where sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty is de­tect­ed.

Busi­ness­es deal­ing in emerg­ing sec­tors such as cryp­tocur­ren­cy face ad­di­tion­al com­pli­ance hur­dles, mak­ing it even more im­por­tant to op­er­ate with­in le­gal frame­works.

For Llanos, suc­cess de­pends on main­tain­ing a glob­al foot­print while en­sur­ing strict reg­u­la­to­ry com­pli­ance.

Small mar­ket de­mands big­ger am­bi­tions

Llanos be­lieves one of  T&T’s biggest struc­tur­al dis­ad­van­tages is the size of its do­mes­tic con­sumer mar­ket.

Af­ter ex­clud­ing chil­dren, re­tirees, and those out­side the work­force, he es­ti­mates that busi­ness­es are ef­fec­tive­ly com­pet­ing for few­er than 1 mil­lion con­sumers.

By com­par­i­son, in­di­vid­ual cities over­seas of­ten have pop­u­la­tions sev­er­al times larg­er than T&T’s en­tire do­mes­tic mar­ket.

That makes in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pan­sion in­creas­ing­ly at­trac­tive for com­pa­nies seek­ing sus­tained growth.

He be­lieves many suc­cess­ful busi­ness­es al­ready pos­sess prod­ucts and ser­vices ca­pa­ble of com­pet­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, but lack ac­ces­si­ble guid­ance on ex­pand­ing over­seas.

Large in­ter­na­tion­al ac­count­ing firms and es­tab­lished lo­cal firms cer­tain­ly pos­sess the ex­per­tise, Llanos ac­knowl­edged, but he be­lieves many medi­um-sized busi­ness­es find those ser­vices fi­nan­cial­ly or prac­ti­cal­ly out of reach.

At­las was es­tab­lished to bridge that gap.

The com­pa­ny as­sists clients with com­pa­ny for­ma­tion, cross-bor­der struc­tur­ing, en­ti­ty man­age­ment, trusts, in­ter­na­tion­al com­pli­ance and cor­po­rate ad­vi­so­ry.

Llanos’ con­sult­ing back­ground spans in­sur­ance, fam­i­ly busi­ness ad­vi­so­ry and busi­ness con­sult­ing, ex­pe­ri­ence he says ex­posed him to the dif­fi­cul­ties many com­pa­nies face when at­tempt­ing in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pan­sion.

Some of those busi­ness­es, he not­ed, are among T&T’s largest fam­i­ly-owned en­ter­pris­es.

He re­called see­ing suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies strug­gle to ob­tain prac­ti­cal sup­port for in­ter­na­tion­al ven­tures de­spite their com­mer­cial suc­cess.

At­las now man­ages 52 clients, in­clud­ing sev­en else­where in the Caribbean, rang­ing from pri­vate com­pa­nies to non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions.

Llanos said the firm’s flag­ship ser­vice is a one-year pri­vate-client re­la­tion­ship priced at TT$10,000.

The pack­age in­cludes en­ti­ty for­ma­tion, quar­ter­ly con­sult­ing ses­sions and on­go­ing ad­vi­so­ry sup­port cov­er­ing is­sues such as bank­ing, reg­u­la­to­ry com­pli­ance, cross-bor­der busi­ness, tax strat­e­gy, cap­i­tal rais­ing and in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pan­sion

Suc­ces­sion plan­ning a ma­jor chal­lenge

Be­yond AI and in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness, Llanos be­lieves an­oth­er is­sue is qui­et­ly threat­en­ing wealth cre­ation across T&T.

He de­scribed suc­ces­sion plan­ning as a na­tion­al prob­lem af­fect­ing fam­i­lies re­gard­less of in­come, eth­nic­i­ty or so­cial back­ground.

Many busi­ness own­ers spend decades build­ing suc­cess­ful en­ter­pris­es with­out mak­ing ad­e­quate arrange­ments for trans­fer­ring those as­sets to the next gen­er­a­tion, he ar­gued.

That of­ten cre­ates un­nec­es­sary dis­putes and un­cer­tain­ty af­ter a founder dies.

At­las pro­vides suc­ces­sion plan­ning ad­vice along­side trust for­ma­tion and cor­po­rate struc­tur­ing, work­ing with ac­coun­tants and le­gal pro­fes­sion­als where spe­cial­ist ex­per­tise is re­quired.

Llanos stressed that while At­las is not a law firm, it works along­side le­gal prac­ti­tion­ers and char­tered ac­coun­tants to help clients de­vel­op ap­pro­pri­ate long-term struc­tures.

The com­pa­ny al­so as­sists or­gan­i­sa­tions seek­ing over­seas in­cor­po­ra­tion, in­ter­na­tion­al reg­is­tra­tions, trusts and spe­cialised cor­po­rate arrange­ments in ju­ris­dic­tions in­clud­ing Pana­ma and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates.

Its client base in­cludes busi­ness­es, char­i­ties and sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions seek­ing new fund­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties or in­ter­na­tion­al ex­pan­sion.

For Sha­hadur, the com­pa­ny’s first year has been about build­ing both the busi­ness and con­fi­dence among en­tre­pre­neurs.

She ac­knowl­edged that en­tre­pre­neur­ship comes with con­stant chal­lenges but be­lieves per­sis­tence re­mains es­sen­tial.

Llanos echoed that mes­sage, en­cour­ag­ing busi­ness own­ers not to aban­don their am­bi­tions sim­ply be­cause of dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic con­di­tions.

His ad­vice is straight­for­ward: em­brace tech­nol­o­gy, look be­yond T&T’s bor­ders, earn for­eign cur­ren­cy wher­ev­er pos­si­ble, and en­sure every as­pect of the busi­ness com­plies with in­creas­ing­ly de­mand­ing in­ter­na­tion­al reg­u­la­to­ry stan­dards.

For com­pa­nies pre­pared to make that shift, he be­lieves op­por­tu­ni­ties re­main abun­dant, even in an econ­o­my con­strained by slow­ing en­er­gy pro­duc­tion and chron­ic for­eign ex­change short­ages.