As a teen Duke Pollard became intrigued by financial markets after his father told him that he was able to purchase his first home by trading stocks.
Pollard was 16 at the time.
And, as a result of his interest, he did numerous online courses to learn how to trade and invest.
His goal was to help people manage their funds.
But age proved a deterrent as people felt he was too young and inexperienced.
This lead him to teach people how to trade in the financial market.
And he established a business called Global Financial Traders.
Pollard conducted seminars and educated the public on how to invest and trade in the international financial markets.
In 2013, at age 24, he established Capital Markets Elite Group which became a broker-dealer to facilitate the people he was teaching in the past.
At 32 he is its chief executive officer.
The company is registered on the T&T Securities and Exchange Commission (TTSEC) as a broker-dealer.
The company is also a registered Foreign Financial Institution (FFI) with the IRS.
During this time he also graduated with a Bachelors of Law from the University of the West Indies.
According to its website, Capital Markets Elite Group is an independent financial services group.
“We provide access to advanced trading platforms as well as retail, institutional and alternative investment services. We believe in giving traders and investors more choices through access to global markets and more investment opportunities. Everything we do is backed by extensive market intelligence, advanced technology and our dedicated customer service team,” it states.
Capital Markets Elite Group is an online brokerage company with over 100 employees.
Pollard said the company specialises in the active trading space allowing investors access to the international financial markets.
It has over $200 million in assets and is one of the largest brokers in this hemisphere.
Pollard said the volume of shares transacted a month is about 300 million.
And the company has done over US$1 billion in transactions.
Capital Markets Elite Group has professional Indemnity Insurance up to US$1.5 million with Lloyd’s of London Syndicates as the lead underwriter.
Capital Markets Elite Group is currently on an expansion drive and is awaiting approval to operate in Canada and the United Kingdom.
Canada is earmarked as the space to trade with cryptocurrency.
Pollard said 99 per cent of its clients are international despite the fact it is based in T&T.
He said he believes two factors are contributing to the apprehension of local investors entering this online investments realm.
“People fear what they don’t understand,” Pollard said.
He said locally investors have the mindset that they would rather put their money into something such a real estate that they can “touch and feel rather than something that is digital.”
The other obstacle Pollard believes is the inability to access foreign exchange.
Pollard believes financial literacy from a young age introduced in secondary schools would help investors allay their fears.
“It will curb that fear and that misconception of investing on the whole in stocks and bonds and create more sophisticated investors,” he said.
Pollard said this country is behind the rest of the world in the investment landscape but all is not lost.
According to Pollard in the Caribbean “we eventually adopt what the international community adopts.”
“I do foresee gradually we will see an adoption in investing in cryptocurrency,” he said.
“What I would like to see locally is more of an adoption in the Fintech space, more legislative reform that will encourage Fintech,” he said
Pollard said he would love to see the Fintech industry grow.
This, he said, will be a way to diversify things locally aware from the traditional sources of revenue.
Chairman of Capital Markets Elite Group Rory Ellis said as a country going forward we have to recognise that the landscape of the world is changing.
“We have to recognise that if we don’t change we will be left behind,” Ellis said.
Ellis said he believes T&T can position itself to be a financial centre.
But we have to go beyond all the talk about this and instead work to make it a reality.
“We need to really make some changes in the legislation. If we don’t and we don’t try to come abreast in the time and the changes, we as a country are going to be left behind,” he said.
“We are not going to be able to keep up, we will always be trying to catch up and we will continue to have a brain drain and they will try to migrate to what they consider to be greener pastures,” Ellis said.
Ellis argued that T&T has an educated population interested in technology.
And that will help us move to where we need to be.
But more needs to be done to prepare our children.
“We have to educate the youth about what the financial market is about,” he said.
“We could be a financial centre to be reckoned with. We can definitely try to be more competitive with the Cayman Island and Bahamas so we have an alternative to oil and gas, I really believe we have to do something to make our country better and this is one of the ways of doing it,” Ellis said.