ANSA Mer­chant Bank has record­ed a fig­ure of $925.4 mil­lion in op­er­at­ing in­come for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2018. The op­er­at­ing in­come was sev­en per cent shy of the $1 bil­lion mark and just be­low the 2017 op­er­at­ing in­come.

Chair­man of the ANSA McAL Group of com­pa­nies A Nor­man Sab­ga said ANSA Mer­chant Bank and its sub­sidiaries de­liv­ered en­cour­ag­ing re­sults in 2018 de­spite the sub­dued lo­cal and re­gion­al eco­nom­ic cli­mate.

ANSA Mer­chant Bank con­sists of Tatil, Tatil Life and Con­sol­i­dat­ed Fi­nance Com­pa­ny.

The prof­it be­fore tax in 2018 of $261 mil­lion re­flect­ed a de­crease of 16.9 per cent over 2017 pri­mar­i­ly re­flect­ing the im­pact of the Bar­ba­dos econ­o­my and in­creased do­mes­tic gen­er­al in­sur­ance claims.

The com­pa­ny’s to­tal eq­ui­ty in­creased by $45 mil­lion or two per cent year-over-year to $2.367 bil­lion, while its to­tal as­sets at the end of 2018 stood at $8 bil­lion.

ANSA Mer­chant Bank’s bank­ing busi­ness pro­duced a prof­it be­fore tax (PBT) of $174 mil­lion com­pared to its $214 mil­lion in 2017.

The in­vest­ment bank­ing di­vi­sion of the com­pa­ny’s Pri­vate Wealth Man­age­ment Ser­vices con­tin­ues to struc­ture and de­liv­er com­pet­i­tive prod­ucts tai­lored to the spe­cif­ic re­quire­ments of large cor­po­rates and sov­er­eigns, with to­tal trans­ac­tions arranged in ex­cess of $27 bil­lion.

The bank’s T&T In­come Mu­tu­al Fund al­so de­liv­ered a 12-month re­turn of 2.13 per cent, which con­tin­ued to se­cure the com­pa­ny at the #1 po­si­tion in the mar­ket.

While Tatil Life gen­er­at­ed a PBT of $48.6 mil­lion com­pared to 2017’s $67.6 mil­lion, Tatil’s PBT de­clined by five per cent giv­en the one-off claims ex­pe­ri­ence in re­la­tion to the do­mes­tic flood and earth­quake events.

The mo­tor and prop­er­ty books of Tatil closed with an in­crease of net pre­mi­um in­come of $19 mil­lion or 9.6 per cent in 2018. Tatil re­mains with a best in class rat­ing by AM Best of A (ex­cel­lent).

“The macro eco­nom­ic con­di­tions in our mar­kets con­tin­ue to pose chal­lenges, how­ev­er, we are con­fi­dent in the fu­ture and in our busi­ness­es to de­liv­er an­oth­er strong per­for­mance in 2019 with fur­ther val­ue cre­ation for our cus­tomers, share­hold­ers and em­ploy­ees,” Sab­ga said.