PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Mort­gage Bank (TTMB) has un­veiled three new mort­gage plans fol­low­ing re­search in­to mod­ern de­mands of prospec­tive home­own­ers and af­ford­able hous­ing.

The bank, which was es­tab­lished in 2024, fol­low­ing a merg­er be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go Mort­gage Fi­nance Ltd (TTMF) and the Home Mort­gage Bank (HMB), an­nounced the new mort­gage op­tions dur­ing the event ‘Own Your Fu­ture: Ex­pand­ing the Mort­gage Land­scape Pro­gramme’ at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre yes­ter­day.

“The prod­ucts are in­clu­sive. These prod­ucts are de­signed to open doors for more cit­i­zens, en­sur­ing that home own­er­ship is ac­ces­si­ble to di­verse com­mu­ni­ties. In­clu­siv­i­ty is not just the prin­ci­ple. It is em­bed­ded in the way we struc­ture so­lu­tions for fam­i­lies, pro­fes­sion­als and en­tre­pre­neurs. Each prod­uct re­flects our com­mit­ment to un­der­stand­ing the unique needs of our clients, whether through flex­i­ble fi­nanc­ing or tai­lored sup­port, we put em­pa­thy in­to ac­tion, en­sur­ing every cus­tomer feels sup­port­ed on their jour­ney,” said act­ing CEO Brent Mc Fee.

The new prod­uct of­fer­ings in­clude ‘Own Make Grow” (OMG), which of­fers a com­bi­na­tion of in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties with pref­er­en­tial rates through three mort­gage pack­ages with­in HMB fi­nance de­vel­op­ments, PMP-Per­son­alised Mort­gage Pric­ing which of­fers greater flex­i­bil­i­ty for mort­gage ap­pli­cants via a da­ta dri­ven ap­proach to mort­gage pric­ing and S/HE-Se­cured Home­own­er­ship for Every Gen­er­a­tion which caters for fe­male-led house­holds.

The SHE prod­uct was cre­at­ed fol­low­ing a part­ner­ship with IDB In­vest for $250 mil­lion in so­cial bonds last year.

“The bond pro­vid­ed by IDB in­vest was to sup­port the mort­gage orig­i­na­tion ac­tiv­i­ties of the Trinidad To­ba­go Mort­gage Bank, no­tably this rep­re­sents the first so­cial bond in the re­gion with an ex­plic­it gen­der lens,” said Wendy Scoon-Hug­gins, gen­er­al man­ag­er, mort­gage ser­vices at TTMB, who ex­plained that the plan was of­fered af­ter an ex­ten­sive study con­duct­ed by the IDB.

She said, “This study un­der­took ex­ten­sive gen­der-fo­cused mar­ket re­search and analysed the unique needs and op­por­tu­ni­ties with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go women’s mort­gage mar­ket. Its pri­ma­ry aim was to im­prove ac­cess to hous­ing for fe­male-head­ed hous­es and women fac­ing sig­nif­i­cant so­cial vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. The study was charged with, amongst oth­er things, char­ac­ter­is­ing the so­cial and de­mo­graph­ic at­trib­ut­es of fe­male mort­gage ap­pli­cants, in­clud­ing age, mar­i­tal sta­tus, num­ber of chil­dren and house­hold lead­er­ship, es­ti­mat­ing the de­mand for mort­gages among women and as­sess­ing women’s pre­pared­ness for home own­er­ship costs.”

Scoon-Hug­gins con­tin­ued, ‘The S/HE mort­gage is there­fore geared to­wards ad­dress­ing any un­der­served mem­bers of the fe­male pop­u­la­tion who are un­able to qual­i­fy un­der our cur­rent pro­grammes, and to bridge the gaps that the fo­cus group analy­sis iden­ti­fied. The find­ings showed that fe­male led house­holds are faced with dif­fer­ent chal­lenges when ac­cess­ing mort­gage fi­nanc­ing.

, de­spite demon­strat­ing strong fi­nan­cial re­silience, longer life ex­pectan­cy and a cen­tral role in fam­i­ly eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty, the rec­om­men­da­tions com­ing out of the study in­clude the di­rect re­spons­es from fe­males.”

The S/HE Mort­gage of­fers ex­tend­ed loan terms of up to 40 years, re­flect­ing women’s longer life ex­pectan­cy and suc­ces­sion plan­ning fea­tures.