I write in re­sponse to the ar­ti­cle “Lee-Chin sells more NCBFG shares” pub­lished on Thurs­day, Sep­tem­ber 12. The news that Michael Lee-Chin has once again sold shares in NCB Fi­nan­cial Group has gar­nered at­ten­tion and sparked a flur­ry of spec­u­la­tion once again. As in­vestors, it is im­por­tant to avoid draw­ing pre­ma­ture con­clu­sions based sole­ly on this kind of ac­tiv­i­ty. While these trans­ac­tions may prompt ques­tions, they should be viewed with­in a broad­er and more in­formed con­text.

Fi­nance pa­pers tend to treat in­sid­er share sales as a sig­nal of de­clin­ing con­fi­dence, but this is not al­ways the case. A prime ex­am­ple is War­ren Buf­fett’s re­duc­tion of his stake in Bank of Amer­i­ca (BOA) in re­cent years. Buf­fett’s sale was not an in­dict­ment of the bank’s per­for­mance; rather, it re­flect­ed rou­tine port­fo­lio ad­just­ments.

Sim­i­lar­ly, when Lee-Chin sells shares, it does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean he has lost faith in NCBFG’s fu­ture. There are many rea­sons why an in­vestor might choose to liq­ui­date por­tions of their hold­ings, in­clud­ing per­son­al fi­nan­cial plan­ning, port­fo­lio re­bal­anc­ing, or the need to di­ver­si­fy.

It is al­so es­sen­tial to con­sid­er that Lee-Chin con­tin­ues to hold a sig­nif­i­cant ma­jor­i­ty of NCBFG shares, main­tain­ing his role as a key stake­hold­er.

His long­stand­ing com­mit­ment to the in­sti­tu­tion, which has grown in­to on of the Caribbean’s largest in­dige­nous fi­nan­cial group, un­der­scores his con­fi­dence in its on­go­ing suc­cess. NCBFG is not mere­ly a com­pa­ny. It is part of Lee-Chin’s larg­er vi­sion of eco­nom­ic em­pow­er­ment and na­tion build­ing across Ja­maica and the Caribbean.

De­spite cur­rent mar­ket fluc­tu­a­tions and macro-eco­nom­ic chal­lenges, NCBFG has con­sis­tent­ly shown strate­gic growth. Its di­verse port­fo­lio of bank­ing, in­sur­ance, wealth man­age­ment, and dig­i­tal pay­ments, speaks to the group’s sol­id foun­da­tion and fu­ture-for­ward ap­proach. We’ve al­so seen the com­pa­ny ven­ture in­to fin­tech.

When War­ren Buf­fett sold BOA shares, many an­a­lysts spec­u­lat­ed about the bank’s fu­ture, but time has shown that his moves were part of a broad­er strat­e­gy that took in­to ac­count ex­ter­nal fac­tors, not the com­pa­ny’s in­trin­sic val­ue.

Like­wise we must recog­nise that Lee-Chin’s de­ci­sions like­ly re­flect his larg­er in­vest­ment strat­e­gy and per­son­al fi­nan­cial goals, rather than sig­nalling any fun­da­men­tal con­cerns about NCBFG’s prospects.

What in­vestors should fo­cus on is NCBFG’s con­tin­ued strength in key ar­eas such as gov­er­nance, cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence, and in­no­va­tion. The com­pa­ny’s abil­i­ty to nav­i­gate Ja­maica’s evolv­ing fi­nan­cial land­scape while ex­pand­ing its reach across the re­gion is a tes­ta­ment to its ro­bust lead­er­ship and vi­sion.

So, rather than over­analysing Lee-Chin’s share sales, re­mem­ber that as in­vestors, we should al­ways look at the big pic­ture, not just the small part that is the loud­est.

Ravi H Ka­mal, via email