February 2, 2010: Customers of the Trinidad and Tobago Unit Trust Corporation (UTC) continued to show their appreciation for the competitive returns offered by the nation’s largest mutual fund company leading to the Corporation gaining over 50% of the local Mutual Fund market share in 2009. “We continue to thank our customers for their business and to work with them to seek consistent long term value regardless of market conditions,” said Marlon Holder, UTC Executive Director. “As a result of our customers’ confidence and the performance of our funds, the final quarter of 2009 also saw UTC’s funds under management increase by TT $2.8 Billion to reach a total of TT $18.4 Billion as at December 31, 2009 compared to a total of TT $ 15.6 Billion in 2008,”  he said.

Due to the volatility in the local and international markets, UTC customers were heartened by performance of UTC’s funds such as the UTC Energy Fund and UTC North American Fund which offered investors double digit returns by year end 2009 of 22.8%  and 17.35%  respectively.  The UTC TT Dollar Income Fund ended 2009 with an average effective yield of 4.47% while the US Dollar Income Fund has an average effective yield of 3.72%.  The Corporation also continues to grow in customers, after celebrating its 500,000th customer in January 2009, the Corporation has added 20,025 new customers as at December 2009 to bring its customer base to 519,400 active customers.

“We are pleased with these results because 2009 was a year of tough choices for many investors and they chose UTC’s products and services. We will continue to be dedicated to providing superior wealth management products and services to our customers big and small,” said UTC Executive Director Marlon Holder. Looking forward to the rest of 2010 he continued to encourage investors to balance their portfolios, “We still view the markets in 2010 as a slow growth market with low interest rates and encourage all investors to continue to build a diversified portfolio to maximize their return.”