The Bea­con-which has evolved in­to one of the lead­ing fi­nan­cial ser­vices providers in the re­gion-has tak­en a gi­ant leap for­ward in re­brand­ing its name. Mov­ing from be­ing known as, The Bea­con, to the sim­ple and un­com­pli­cat­ed Bea­con, on Jan­u­ary 20, the com­pa­ny has etched an­oth­er chap­ter in its book by step­ping away from the tra­di­tion­al and in­to a dif­fer­ent way of do­ing things. Born out of a pre­de­ces­sor com­pa­ny, Caribbean In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny Ltd, Bea­con be­gan op­er­a­tions in the ear­ly '70s. It was a fam­i­ly-owned busi­ness, op­er­at­ed by the late Az­iz "Pipe­man" Hadeed, who had over 30 years ex­pe­ri­ence in the in­sur­ance in­dus­try. Hadeed's son, Ger­ald S Hadeed car­ries on the tra­di­tion es­tab­lished by his fa­ther in his ca­pac­i­ty as chief ex­ec­u­tive.

On Ju­ly 1, 1996, The Bea­con In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny Ltd was cap­i­talised as a new in­sur­ance com­pa­ny and ab­sorbed the port­fo­lio of Caribbean In­sur­ance. The light­house sym­bol was re­tained for its con­no­ta­tion of strength and pro­tec­tion, a beam of light that of­fers hope and guid­ance. Evolv­ing in­to one of the lead­ing fi­nan­cial ser­vices providers in the re­gion, Bea­con com­menced op­er­a­tions with an an­nu­al pre­mi­um in­come of just un­der $30 mil­lion. The busi­ness has since grown to over $280 mil­lion for the year end­ing June 30, 2011. Their pres­ence stretch­es across the Caribbean with of­fices in Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent, Bar­ba­dos, and St Kitts and Nevis due to its re­la­tion­ships with clients, rein­sur­ers and bro­kers, IT sys­tems, cap­i­tal base and ex­pan­sion plans demon­strat­ed. Con­stant­ly chang­ing, Bea­con has been nim­ble enough to adapt to these changes with an em­pha­sis on per­son­al re­la­tion­ships.