GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Pan Amer­i­can Life In­sur­ance Group (PALIG) is close­ly mon­i­tor­ing T&T’s evolv­ing reg­u­la­to­ry land­scape—in­clud­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed as­set tax and planned re­forms to make pri­vate pen­sions tax free—as the com­pa­ny ush­ers in a new era of lead­er­ship with the ap­point­ment of Win­ston Williams as CEO for T&T and the wider Caribbean.

In a wide-rang­ing press con­fer­ence which took place at the Hy­att Re­gency yes­ter­day, com­pa­ny ex­ec­u­tives con­firmed that while the full im­pact of the as­set tax is still un­clear, on­go­ing dis­cus­sions with au­thor­i­ties have been pro­duc­tive.

Asked about the im­pact that the as­set tax could have on the com­pa­ny, Williams said, “One of the things we’ve been talk­ing through AT­TIC (As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T In­sur­ance Com­pa­nies) to the Gov­ern­ment is which as­sets are go­ing to be con­sid­ered for this as­set tax and it ap­pears as though they’re still work­ing through how it’s go­ing to un­fold. So I guess the re­al im­pact would be bet­ter felt when those as­sets are quan­ti­fied, and then we’ll know how it’s go­ing to im­pact us.”

He said the com­pa­ny would try not to change around too many things for it to im­pact its clients, but the as­set tax would af­fect the cost of do­ing busi­ness.

Re­gard­ing the goal to make pri­vate pen­sions tax-free and the im­pact on the com­pa­ny, Williams said this move may not af­fect PALIG “per se” but more­so the peo­ple who are re­ceiv­ing the pen­sion.

“So if we have to pay you a pen­sion of $10,000 a month, the cur­rent law says you need to take the tax de­duc­tion out of that and re­mit the dif­fer­ence to the client. Now, what is sup­posed to hap­pen is that you take no tax, you just re­mit the en­tire pen­sion to the client.

“So when we spoke to In­land Rev­enue, think about a week or two ago, and we asked if we should de­sist from de­duct­ing those tax­es, and they said, no, not yet, we have not re­ceived the Cab­i­net note to en­force that. So for the com­pa­ny, noth­ing, for the client, 25 per cent more in your pock­et,” Williams added.

Bruce Park­er, PALIG’s pres­i­dent for glob­al life in­sur­ance busi­ness fur­ther stat­ed that this could en­cour­age more peo­ple to get pri­vate pen­sions, know­ing that their in­come some­day would not be taxed. He said that this could al­so re­sult in a sales boost long-term for the com­pa­ny.

These reg­u­la­to­ry shifts come as PALIG con­tin­ues to ex­pand in one of its most im­por­tant re­gions.

PALIG’s Daniel Costel­lo, ex­ec­u­tive vice-pres­i­dent of in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets, shared de­tails about the com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cials.

Asked to give a gen­er­al sense of the rev­enues and prof­its for the com­pa­ny in 2025 com­pared to the pre­vi­ous years he said, “We will grow in the to­tal Caribbean rev­enues, which will ap­proach US$140 mil­lion ... at the end of the day the prof­itabil­i­ty of the com­pa­ny has been strong.”

Look­ing be­yond rev­enue and prof­it, the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s as­set base is ex­pect­ed to in­crease in line with pre­mi­um growth, with fore­casts in­di­cat­ing an eight to nine per cent rise.

Williams iden­ti­fied dis­tri­b­u­tion growth as his top pri­or­i­ty for 2026.

“We have ex­cel­lent prod­ucts, ex­cel­lent ad­vice, and ex­cel­lent peo­ple,” he said. “Now it’s time to take that mes­sage to more com­mu­ni­ties.”

Tech­nol­o­gy up­grades rep­re­sent an­oth­er ma­jor pil­lar of the com­pa­ny’s strat­e­gy. PALIG is tran­si­tion­ing to­wards ful­ly dig­i­tal cus­tomer com­mu­ni­ca­tions and is prepar­ing to launch a pa­per­less, elec­tron­ic ap­pli­ca­tion sys­tem by mid-2026.

The sys­tem would sim­pli­fy process­es for both agents and cus­tomers and sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce the com­pa­ny’s car­bon foot­print.