Is NIB stable?

The strong fi­nan­cial health of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NIB) is cru­cial to every per­son liv­ing in this coun­try, main­ly be­cause the coun­try’s so­cial in­sur­ance provider touch­es al­most every house­hold.

The num­bers are stag­ger­ing: in its lat­est fi­nan­cial re­port for the year end­ed June 30, 2025, the NIB record­ed its cus­tomer base at 633,001, in­clud­ing 207,222 long-term ben­e­fi­cia­ries and 18,914 em­ploy­ers.

In its 2025 fi­nan­cial year, the NIB paid out a to­tal of $6.36 bil­lion in ben­e­fits, in­clud­ing:

—$5.40 bil­lion to 145,114 re­tire­ment pen­sion ben­e­fi­cia­ries

—$582.26 mil­lion in sur­vivors’ ben­e­fits to 53,397 per­sons;

—$304.52 mil­lion in re­tire­ment grants to 5,767 na­tion­als; and

—$71.21 mil­lion to 2,944 re­cip­i­ents of in­va­lid­i­ty ben­e­fits.

Giv­en the im­por­tance of the NIB, it is cru­cial that the or­gan­i­sa­tion re­mains pro­fes­sion­al­ly man­aged with a strong board com­pris­ing com­pe­tent and vi­sion­ary di­rec­tors who strict­ly abide by the rules and reg­u­la­tions set out by the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion and oth­er laws and busi­ness tra­di­tions.

Last Thurs­day, in a com­men­tary head­lined 'Is NIB’s RFHL share pur­chase pru­dent? I raised some is­sues re­lat­ing to the de­ci­sion by the NIB to in­crease its share­hold­ing in Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd, which is the largest fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion by as­sets and mar­ket cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean, to more than 20 per cent.

For the read­ers who might have missed that com­men­tary, I wrote:

“The ac­qui­si­tion of an ad­di­tion­al 4,430,161 RFHL shares for about $487 mil­lion would ben­e­fit NIB—and the tens of thou­sands of T&T na­tion­als who re­ceive pen­sions and oth­er ben­e­fits from the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion—if the re­gion­al bank con­tin­ues to be more prof­itable every year and it con­tin­ues to pay out ever-in­creas­ing div­i­dends.

“But if RFHL were to be less prof­itable in the fu­ture, and as a re­sult it paid out few­er div­i­dends, the pic­ture would look dra­mat­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent.”

On Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 14, two things hap­pened that have giv­en this com­men­ta­tor pause.

First­ly, the top two ex­ec­u­tives of NIB—ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Niala Per­sad-Po­li­ah and deputy ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Andy Ed­wards—an­nounced that they would be pro­ceed­ing on ear­ly re­tire­ment as at De­cem­ber 13, 2026. The fact that both of them are in their ear­ly fifties and they both sub­mit­ted let­ters to NIB chair, Judy Kalloo, an­nounc­ing a de­sire to re­tire ear­ly strikes me as be­ing a strange co­in­ci­dence. Let me leave that there for now, pend­ing the re­ceipt of fur­ther and bet­ter par­tic­u­lars.

I as­sume that the rea­son both pro­pose to leave the in­sti­tu­tion on De­cem­ber 13 is be­cause they signed con­tracts re­quir­ing them to give three months’ no­tice.

Stranger yet, and al­so on Sep­tem­ber 14, was what can on­ly be de­scribed as a whistle­blow­er let­ter from some­one who de­scribes them­selves as a con­cerned NIB in­sid­er.

The NIB whistle­blow­er raised nine ar­eas of con­cern, in­clud­ing: board com­po­si­tion and suit­abil­i­ty; al­leged com­pli­ance ir­reg­u­lar­i­ty; pro­cure­ment and po­ten­tial con­flicts of in­ter­est and the use of per­son­al email ac­counts for NIB busi­ness.

While it would be in­ap­pro­pri­ate for me to par­tic­u­larise most of the al­le­ga­tions made in the ab­sence of proof, the one claim the whistle­blow­er made that struck a chord con­cerns the in­vest­ment com­mit­tee and over­sight of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Fund.

“There are con­cerns that the board’s in­vest­ment com­mit­tee has not been con­vened since the ap­point­ment of the cur­rent board. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing giv­en the statu­to­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as­signed to the com­mit­tee un­der sec­tion 24(1) of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Act, which states an in­vest­ment com­mit­tee shall be con­vened com­pris­ing the chair­man, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor, chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer and three oth­er Board mem­bers nom­i­nat­ed by the Min­is­ter, Busi­ness and Labour re­spec­tive­ly.

“Giv­en the size and im­por­tance of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Fund, the ab­sence of a func­tion­ing in­vest­ment com­mit­tee would raise sig­nif­i­cant ques­tions re­gard­ing in­vest­ment gov­er­nance, over­sight and com­pli­ance with the statu­to­ry frame­work,” ac­cord­ing to the whistle­blow­er.

I would be sur­prised, quite frankly, if it is true that the NIB board has not set up the in­vest­ment com­mit­tee. That is be­cause not on­ly is such a com­mit­tee man­dat­ed by law, but it is ab­solute­ly es­sen­tial to pro­vide the nec­es­sary over­sight and ask the per­ti­nent ques­tions of the rec­om­men­da­tions made by the spe­cialised in­vest­ments busi­ness unit.

For ex­am­ple, who ques­tioned the po­ten­tial down­sides of NIB’s de­ci­sion to in­crease its share­hold­ing in RFHL to over 20 per cent?

Fi­nan­cial prospects?

As of June 2025, based on the NIB’s au­dit­ed fi­nan­cials, the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Fund stood at $27.36 bil­lion, down from $30.78 bil­lion in June 2021. That means from Ju­ly 1, 2021 to June 30, 2025, a pe­ri­od of four years, the Fund de­clined by 11.11 per cent. That is an an­nu­al av­er­age de­cline of 2.77 per cent for the pe­ri­od.

In a state­ment to Guardian Me­dia Ltd, which was pub­lished on Oc­to­ber 17, 2025, un­der the head­line ‘Em­ploy­ees to pay 23% more in NIS con­tri­bu­tions in 2026,’ out­go­ing NIB ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Niala Per­sad-Po­li­ah said, “Be­hind these fig­ures lie a deep­er is­sue; ben­e­fits have ex­ceed­ed con­tri­bu­tions since 2013, and the sys­tem has been con­sis­tent­ly run­ning an­nu­al deficits since then, re­quir­ing with­drawals from in­vest­ment in­come to sus­tain ben­e­fit ex­pen­di­ture.”

In pre­sent­ing the 2026 bud­get on Oc­to­ber 13, 2025, Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo an­nounced a crit­i­cal in­ter­ven­tion that should im­prove the fi­nan­cial sta­tus of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Fund go­ing for­ward.

That, of course, was the in­crease in the con­tri­bu­tion rate of em­ploy­ers and em­ploy­ees by three per­cent­age points (NOT by 3 per cent as the min­is­ter said) ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 5, 2026, fol­lowed by an­oth­er three-per­cent­age-point in­crease from Jan­u­ary 4, 2027.

That means an em­ploy­ee’s NIB con­tri­bu­tion in­creased from 13.2 per cent of their av­er­age month­ly earn­ings to 16.2 per cent on Jan­u­ary 5, 2026 and is due to be in­creased to 19.2 per cent on Jan­u­ary 4, 2027.

By way of ex­am­ple, an em­ploy­ee in Cat­e­go­ry XVI, with av­er­age month­ly in­come of $13,600 in 2025, con­tributed $598.43 a month to the NIB last year, but is con­tribut­ing $734.50 a month this year. That is an in­crease of $136.07 or 22.73 per cent.

In T&T’s na­tion­al in­sur­ance sys­tem, em­ploy­ees pay one-third of the to­tal con­tri­bu­tion, and em­ploy­ers pay two-thirds.

In the state­ment, Ms Per­sad-Po­li­ah as­sessed the im­pact of the in­crease in con­tri­bu­tions on the fi­nan­cial sta­tus of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Fund.

“The pro­posed con­tri­bu­tion in­crease is pro­ject­ed to raise ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1 bil­lion in 2026. In 2027, ac­tu­ar­i­al es­ti­mates sug­gest that our con­tri­bu­tion in­come will in­crease by a fur­ther $1 bil­lion. This would re­duce the cur­rent cash flow deficit, de­lay the de­ple­tion of the Fund and give us more time to im­ple­ment strate­gies to en­sure the Fund is sus­tain­able for gen­er­a­tions to come. Our 12th Ac­tu­ar­i­al Re­view is cur­rent­ly un­der­way and we will give a more up­dat­ed as­sess­ment of the im­pact of these re­form mea­sures,” said the NIB ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor.

In its Re­port on Op­er­a­tions for the fi­nan­cial year end­ing June 30, 2025, the NIB de­clared its con­tri­bu­tion in­come in its 2025 fi­nan­cial year as $5 bil­lion and its ben­e­fit ex­pen­di­ture at $6.63 bil­lion. That means its ben­e­fit ex­pen­di­ture ex­ceed­ed its con­tri­bu­tion in­come by $1.63 bil­lion.

That $1.63 bil­lion deficit in the fi­nan­cial year end­ed June 30, 2025 was fund­ed, in part, by the NIB’s net re­alised in­vest­ment in­come, which to­talled $1.28 bil­lion.

The main con­trib­u­tors to NIB’s net re­alised in­vest­ment in­come in 2025 were:

* Div­i­dend in­come—$454.54 mil­lion;

* Gain on sale of for­eign eq­ui­ties—$355.30 mil­lion; and

* Lo­cal in­ter­est in­come—$294.85 mil­lion;

These three cat­e­gories of in­come con­tributed 86 per cent of NIB’s net re­alised in­vest­ment in­come. Just as a mat­ter of in­ter­est, in the 2025 cal­en­dar year, the NIB re­ceived $184.87 mil­lion.

So, if the NIB is on track to in­crease its con­tri­bu­tion in­come by $1 bil­lion in 2026 and an­oth­er $1 bil­lion in 2027, that seems like good news.

But what is need­ed now is for the NIB to clear the air on the ear­ly re­tire­ments of its top ex­ec­u­tives, this month's RFHL share ac­qui­si­tion and the nine con­cerns raised by the whistle­blow­er.