GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Act­ing CEO of the The Trinidad and To­ba­go Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change (TTSEC), Lystra Lu­cil­lio has said the se­cu­ri­ties mar­ket has, and con­tin­ues to con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the coun­try’s GDP.

She said as at Ju­ly 31, 2020 the se­cu­ri­ties mar­ket was val­ued at over TT$325 bil­lion--ap­prox­i­mate­ly twice the size of T&T’s GDP for 2018.

Lu­cil­lio who was speak­ing at the launch of the com­mis­sion’s Elec­tron­i­cal­ly Ad­vanced Sub­mis­sion in­ter­face or EASi plat­form said TTSEC’s role as the reg­u­la­tor of the se­cu­ri­ties in­dus­try be­gan some 23 years ago, in 1997.

At that time, there were 77 reg­is­trants since then, both the mar­ket and the num­ber of mar­ket play­ers have grown sig­nif­i­cant­ly as to date, there are over 570 reg­is­trants.

“In the midst of this dig­i­tal era and rapid­ly evolv­ing se­cu­ri­ties in­dus­try, we are adapt­ing our tra­di­tion­al process­es to bet­ter meet the needs of our mar­ket par­tic­i­pants as well as in­vestors and po­ten­tial in­vestors.

“Sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al reg­u­la­tors have al­ready been util­is­ing tech­no­log­i­cal plat­forms to en­gage with and reg­u­late their mar­kets,” Lu­cil­lio said.

She said the EASi plat­form is aligned with the com­mis­sion’s vi­sion to be an ag­ile and ef­fec­tive reg­u­la­tor by us­ing tech­nol­o­gy to tran­si­tion in­to a dig­i­tal econ­o­my.

“This trans­for­ma­tion for the TTSEC in­volves the util­i­sa­tion of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy to en­hance the way in which we col­lect, process and de­vel­op re­ports. In essence, it can be con­sid­ered a type of su­per­vi­so­ry tech­nol­o­gy or SupTech,”Lu­cil­lio ex­plained.

EASi al­so ties in­to the Com­mis­sion’s “Go Green” ini­tia­tive, aimed at adopt­ing a more sus­tain­able and cost-ef­fi­cient work en­vi­ron­ment, as it will sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce the use of pa­per and de­liv­ery cost.

Go­ing for­ward, the com­mis­sion will be ad­vanc­ing the ca­pa­bil­i­ties with­in the EASi plat­form to:

1. En­able Reg­is­trants to sub­mit Mi­cro and Macro Pru­den­tial Re­port­ing (MM­RF) Forms;

2. Lever­age the busi­ness in­tel­li­gence fea­tures; and

3. Fur­ther gen­er­ate com­par­a­tive sta­tis­tics, and analyse da­ta.

“The TTSEC is bridg­ing the gap be­tween reg­u­la­tion and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, and mak­ing it eas­i­er and more ef­fi­cient to do busi­ness in T&T,” Lu­cil­lio added.