Sagicor Bank Jamaica Ltd listed its preference shares on the Jamaica Stock Exchange last Friday, marking the first time in the bank’s 34-year history that it has had a listing.

The preference share offer closed on February 28, with the bank successfully raising $2.06 billion, according to a release from the company.

The Jamaican dollar preference issue had two tranches — one over 18 months, maturing on September 2, 2018, with a coupon of 7.75 per cent; and the other 36 months, maturing March 2, 2020, with a coupon of 8.25 per cent.

Omar Brown, assistant vice-president, treasury at Sagicor Bank, speaking at the listing ceremony at the JSE in downtown Kingston, said that in 2016 Sagicor made record profits of $1.86 billion, an increase of more than 48 per cent over the previous year.

“During this time our loan book grew by 29 per cent or $12.6 billion, which demonstrates our commitment to the growth of the Jamaican economy,” he said.

He added that in order to maintain that commitment to the economy, Sagicor realised that it could no longer sit in the bank and rely on only deposit growth to fund credit expansion in this competitive market.

“As such, we expanded our options to include quasi-debt and have issued these preference shares,” he added.

President and CEO of Sagicor Bank, Donovan Perkins, in noting that credit expansion is critical to economic expansion and creating new jobs, said that the bank is focused on expanding lending across all its retail credit products.

“As a part of the banking sector, Sagicor wants to play a positive, active role. We see an emerging trend of underemployment for recent university graduates and see this as a risk as we lose our talent to North America,” Perkins said.