In­sur­ance in­dus­try rat­ings agency, AM Best, has up­grad­ed the fi­nan­cial strength rat­ing of CG Unit­ed In­sur­ance Ltd. (CG Unit­ed) to “A” (Ex­cel­lent) while af­firm­ing the A rat­ing of par­ent Coral­isle Group Ltd and its op­er­at­ing sub­sidiaries.

AM Best al­so up­grad­ed CG Unit­ed’s long-term Is­suer Cred­it Rat­ing (ICR) to “a” (Ex­cel­lent) from “a-” and re­vised the out­look for the Bar­ba­dos-based in­sur­er to ‘sta­ble’ from ‘pos­i­tive’.

The fi­nan­cial strength rat­ings of “A” and long-term ICRs of “a” were af­firmed for CG’s life/health and prop­er­ty/ca­su­al­ty op­er­at­ing sub­sidiaries.

In a news re­lease, AM Best said the rat­ing up­grades for CG Unit­ed re­flect­ed its “in­creased strate­gic im­por­tance” to the Coral­isle Group and its “sub­stan­tial­ly com­plete in­te­gra­tion” with CG. The in­te­gra­tion, which fol­lowed CG’s 2022 ac­qui­si­tion of CG Unit­ed, in­clud­ed CG re­brand­ing, rein­sur­ance pur­chas­ing, the li­cens­ing of CG Unit­ed en­ti­ties to sell CG health prod­ucts and “cost syn­er­gies re­lat­ed to con­sol­i­da­tion of core sys­tems and process­es.”

In May 2022, Massy Hold­ings Ltd con­clud­ed the sale of its Bar­ba­dos in­sur­ance com­pa­ny, Massy Unit­ed In­sur­ance Ltd to the Coral­isle Group, which is based in Bermu­da.

In a state­ment is­sued on Sep­tem­ber 7, 2021, Massy said its Bar­ba­dos sub­sidiary en­tered in­to a share pur­chase agree­ment with the Coral­isle Group to sell 100 per cent of the Bar­ba­dos in­sur­ance com­pa­ny’s share cap­i­tal for US$90.5 mil­lion.

In the May 2022 news re­lease, the Coral­isle Group said the ac­qui­si­tion sig­nif­i­cant­ly ex­pand­ed its pres­ence across the Caribbean, adding 14 new mar­kets where CG Unit­ed op­er­ates.

These in­clude An­guil­la, An­tigua & Bar­bu­da, Montser­rat, Do­mini­ca, St Lu­cia, St Vin­cent, St Maarten, Grena­da, Trinidad and To­ba­go, Guyana, Cu­ra­cao, Aru­ba, Ja­maica and Be­lize.

The Coral­isle Group and CG Unit­ed have com­ple­men­tary op­er­a­tions in The Ba­hamas, Turks & Caicos, British Vir­gin Is­lands, Bar­ba­dos and the Cay­man Is­lands, with min­i­mal over­lap in their prod­uct of­fer­ings.

CG Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Naz Far­row said the ac­qui­si­tion was dri­ven by its po­ten­tial to gen­er­ate new busi­ness and the com­mer­cial, cul­tur­al and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al syn­er­gies of the two in­sur­ance groups.

Far­row said, “We are two well-es­tab­lished com­pa­nies whose ex­pe­ri­ence, skills and prod­uct lines are well matched to meet cus­tomer needs in all cir­cum­stances. We will work to ad­vance the ex­ist­ing strengths and val­ues Unit­ed has built over decades.

“In par­tic­u­lar, the ac­qui­si­tion will al­low us to in­tro­duce, over time, CG Health, Life and Pen­sion so­lu­tions to the mar­kets where CG Unit­ed op­er­ates, build­ing on its strengths in prop­er­ty and ca­su­al­ty in­sur­ance.”