De­clar­ing half-year div­i­dends of US $3.25 per pref­er­ence share and US $0.20 per com­mon share Sagi­cor Fi­nan­cial Cor­po­ra­tion, in its fi­nan­cial re­sults for the nine months end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, re­port­ed af­ter tax prof­its of $38,596,000. This af­ter prof­it rep­re­sents a 90 per cent in­crease com­pared to 2011.

But its cash and cash equiv­a­lents de­creased at the end of Sep­tem­ber 2012 com­pared to the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2011. There was a de­crease of 12 per cent as cash moved from $241,711,000 in 2011 to $212,255,000 in 2012.

Ac­cord­ing to chair­man Stephen Mc­Na­ma­ra, in his re­port, "Sagi­cor main­tained its rat­ings even though many Caribbean ju­ris­dic­tions face sig­nif­i­cant fis­cal and eco­nom­ic chal­lenges. To­geth­er with mar­gin­al eco­nom­ic growth in North Amer­i­ca, Eu­rope and the Caribbean, above nor­mal un­em­ploy­ment lev­els through­out, in­fla­tion­ary pres­sures in the Caribbean and low in­ter­est rates in the USA, UK and T&T, the ex­ter­nal en­vi­ron­ment for the group is very chal­leng­ing."

De­spite the chal­leng­ing ex­ter­nal en­vi­ron­ment, Sagi­cor con­tin­ues to do well. "Sagi­cor con­tin­ues to write good vol­umes of new busi­ness pre­mi­um and to achieve con­sis­tent lev­els of re­ten­tion on its life, health and an­nu­ity in­sur­ance busi­ness," Mc­Na­ma­ra said. Al­so ex­pressed in the con­sol­i­dat­ed state­ment of in­come is its share­hold­ing in Ja­maica.

"Sagi­cor re­tains a 51 per cent share­hold­ing in Sagi­cor Life Ja­maica. Al­so dur­ing the third quar­ter, Sagi­cor's sub­sidiary in the USA ac­quired PEM­CO Life In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny, a Wash­ing­ton State-based life in­sur­ance com­pa­ny with 7,500 pol­i­cy­hold­ers. This trans­ac­tion gen­er­at­ed a gain of US $2.4 mil­lion, which has been re­flect­ed in the con­sol­i­dat­ed state­ment of in­come."