“As an industry it has become increasingly important for broker/dealers and investment houses to look at new and innovative ways to bring new products to the public. This is especially critical for security dealers who have been limited by the lack of product alternatives due to regulatory constraints. As you know the opening up of the unit trust and mutual fund industry has been an issue for over a decade and we are happy to have been informed recently by the FSC that the moratorium on new unit trust offerings will be lifted within the next few months. The opening up of this important product offering will allow clients to participate directly in the holding of various debt and equity offering and allow broker dealers to move towards fee based income sources away from intermediation.

Therefore the introduction of our Scotia DBG Caribbean Income Fund is timely and meets our core objectives of diversifying the revenue streams of our company. For those of you who attended our corporate seminar recently, you would have heard the Minister of Finance, Audley Shaw speaking passionately about the importance of low interest rates to our economic development and the fact that investors and brokers alike should get used to “single digit interest rates”. This means that as an industry we can no longer rely solely on interest margins to make our revenue targets but we must offer products which provide opportunities for our clients to diversify their portfolios while generating other sources of income. As institutions, we have to remain dynamic and have the flexibility to adept to our ever changing environment and we are constantly doing this.”

Anya Schnoor, CEO Scotia DBG Investments and Senior Vice President, Wealth Management – Scotiabank Group.