An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

A sec­ond se­nior ex­ec­u­tive at the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NIBTT) has opt­ed for ear­ly re­tire­ment, fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment of ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Niala Per­sad-Po­li­ah’s de­par­ture from the so­cial se­cu­ri­ty provider.

Deputy ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Andy Ed­wards, who turns 51 next month, sub­mit­ted his re­tire­ment no­tice to NIBTT chair­man Judy Kalloo on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 14, the same date Per­sad-Po­li­ah sub­mit­ted her let­ter.

Ed­wards’ re­tire­ment takes ef­fect on De­cem­ber 13, 2026, with his fi­nal work­ing day set for De­cem­ber 11.

He is leav­ing af­ter ap­prox­i­mate­ly 11 and a half years with NIBTT.

Con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia, Ed­wards con­firmed that he sub­mit­ted his let­ter on Mon­day. Asked why he had de­cid­ed to re­tire ear­ly, he de­clined to com­ment.

Per­sad-Po­li­ah’s re­tire­ment was re­port­ed by Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day af­ter the news­pa­per ob­tained her Sep­tem­ber 14 let­ter to Kalloo.

She is due to leave af­ter a 23-year ca­reer with NIBTT, in­clud­ing 12 years as ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor. Per­sad-Po­li­ah, who is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 52, al­so gave no rea­son for her ear­ly re­tire­ment when con­tact­ed.

Her let­ter de­scribed the de­ci­sion as dif­fi­cult and made af­ter care­ful re­flec­tion. She al­so pledged to fa­cil­i­tate con­ti­nu­ity of lead­er­ship and op­er­a­tions ahead of her de­par­ture.

The de­vel­op­ments come amid con­cerns raised by a se­nior NIBTT em­ploy­ee about gov­er­nance and over­sight at the in­sti­tu­tion, which man­ages a Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Fund (NIF) val­ued at ap­prox­i­mate­ly $30 bil­lion.

Among the is­sues raised is whether mem­bers of the NIBTT Board un­der­went for­mal suit­abil­i­ty as­sess­ments be­fore their ap­point­ments and whether doc­u­men­ta­tion ex­ists to sup­port those as­sess­ments.

Con­cerns were al­so raised about the ef­fec­tive­ness of board de­ci­sion-mak­ing, with the em­ploy­ee claim­ing meet­ings can run for six to nine hours while sig­nif­i­cant mat­ters re­main un­re­solved.

In­vest­ment over­sight is an­oth­er area high­light­ed.

The em­ploy­ee claims NIBTT’s In­vest­ment Com­mit­tee has not been con­vened since the ap­point­ment of the cur­rent board, rais­ing ques­tions about over­sight of the NIF.

Sec­tion 24(1) of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Act pro­vides for an In­vest­ment Com­mit­tee com­pris­ing the chair­man, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer and three oth­er board mem­bers nom­i­nat­ed by the min­is­ter, busi­ness and labour re­spec­tive­ly.

An al­leged com­pli­ance ir­reg­u­lar­i­ty in­volv­ing a se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny was al­so raised.

The em­ploy­ee al­leges a di­rec­tor in­struct­ed a staff mem­ber to is­sue a com­pli­ance cer­tifi­cate de­spite the com­pa­ny al­leged­ly fail­ing to meet ap­plic­a­ble re­quire­ments. The em­ploy­ee fur­ther claims the mat­ter was re­port­ed in­ter­nal­ly but was not ap­pro­pri­ate­ly ad­dressed.

Pro­cure­ment and po­ten­tial con­flicts of in­ter­est al­so fea­ture in the con­cerns, in­clud­ing ques­tions sur­round­ing the can­cel­la­tion and sub­se­quent re-ini­ti­a­tion of a pro­cure­ment ex­er­cise and al­leged con­nec­tions be­tween a com­pa­ny and a NIBTT board mem­ber.
Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo yes­ter­day for com­ment on the sec­ond ear­ly re­tire­ment, but he had not re­spond­ed up to press time.