Lo­cal fi­nan­cial gi­ant, Guardian Hold­ings Ltd (GHL), yes­ter­day an­nounced that its board of di­rec­tors had ap­proved the ac­qui­si­tion of the pen­sion fund man­age­ment port­fo­lio of NCB In­sur­ance Agency & Fund Man­age­ment Ltd on Ju­ly 11.

The pen­sion fund man­age­ment port­fo­lio was ac­quired by Guardian Life Ltd (GLL), which is GHL’s life, health and pen­sion busi­ness based in Ja­maica.

The trans­ac­tion in­volves re­lat­ed par­ties as NCB Fi­nan­cial Group (NCBFG) owns 61.77 per cent of GHL and 100 per cent of NCB In­sur­ance Agency & Fund Man­age­ment Ltd.

The chair­man of GHL is Robert Almei­da, who is the Group CEO of NCBFG. The chair­man of NCBFG is Michael Lee-Chin.

In a no­tice pub­lished on the web­site of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change, GHL de­scribed the trans­ac­tion as a strate­gic ini­tia­tive, adding that the ac­qui­si­tion “is ex­pect­ed to de­liv­er strate­gic and fi­nan­cial val­ue to GLL and by ex­ten­sion the group, strength­en mar­ket po­si­tion and grow Share­hold­er val­ue in the medi­um to long term.”

In Sep­tem­ber 2020, NCBFG stream­lined its Ja­maican in­sur­ance busi­ness through the trans­fer of the in­sur­ance and an­nu­ities port­fo­lios of NCB In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed to fel­low sub­sidiary Guardian Life Ltd.

Fol­low­ing the trans­fer of the port­fo­lios, NCBIC changed its name to NCB In­sur­ance Agency & Fund Man­age­ment, as the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to pro­vide pen­sion fund ad­min­is­tra­tion and in­vest­ment man­age­ment ser­vices.

Up to last night, GHL had not re­leased de­tails of the trans­ac­tion.

Guardian Hold­ings Ltd (GHL) start­ed off 2025 with some bumper re­sults, de­clar­ing an af­ter-tax prof­it of $771.3 mil­lion, more than tripling the prof­it of $233.8 mil­lion in the first quar­ter of 2024.

Much of that in­crease, about 84 per cent, was main­ly at­trib­uted to the gain on sale of 100 per cent of the shares of Thoma Ex­ploitatie of $651 mil­lion in Jan­u­ary.