Sagi­cor Fi­nan­cial Com­pa­ny Ltd has record­ed to­tal net rev­enue of US$516.3 mil­lion for the sec­ond quar­ter of this year. This was an in­crease of 13 per cent when com­pared the to the same pe­ri­od, last year.

“Sagi­cor is pleased to an­nounce an­oth­er quar­ter of sol­id prof­itabil­i­ty and growth. Sagi­cor Life USA post­ed a strong quar­ter re­flect­ing progress in our US strat­e­gy as that busi­ness grows to­wards scale,” Sagi­cor’s group pres­i­dent and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Do­dridge Miller stat­ed.

“Our busi­ness­es in the Caribbean al­so grew com­pared to a chal­leng­ing pe­ri­od in Q2 2020, and they re­main prof­itable in the face of con­tin­ued eco­nom­ic head­winds,” Miller stat­ed.

Sagi­cor’s net in­sur­ance pre­mi­ums of US$364.9 mil­lion in quar­ter two in­creased 18 per cent year over year.

Net in­come to share­hold­ers in­creased by 3,200 per cent.

“Net in­come to share­hold­ers of US$9.3 mil­lion in the quar­ter was a sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment over the net loss of US$0.3 mil­lion record­ed in Q2 2020.

“The main pos­i­tive con­tribut­ing fac­tor to the fi­nan­cial per­for­mance dur­ing the three-month pe­ri­od were strong sales and im­proved as­set spreads in our US seg­ment. Net in­come in this quar­ter was neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed by $5.6 mil­lion of one-time costs re­lat­ed to the ear­ly re­tire­ment of our bond due in 2022,” Sagi­cor stat­ed.

To­tal cap­i­tal of US$2.37 bil­lion in­creased by 13 per cent when com­pared to the pri­or quar­ter due to an im­prove­ment in as­set val­ues.

“The com­pa­ny’s vol­un­tar­i­ly adopt­ed min­i­mum con­tin­u­ing cap­i­tal and sur­plus re­quire­ments ra­tio for its in­sur­ance busi­ness­es re­mained strong at 247 per cent and the com­pa­ny’s debt to cap­i­tal ra­tio was 31.3 per cent, rep­re­sent­ing a short term in­crease of 9.1 per­cent­age points Y/Y, as the com­pa­ny held US$188 mil­lion of ex­cess debt it in­tend­ed to re­tire sub­se­quent to quar­ter end,” it stat­ed.

Sagi­cor not­ed that ac­count­ing for that debt re­pay­ment was com­plet­ed on Au­gust 11, and the com­pa­ny’s debt to cap­i­tal ra­tio would have been ap­prox­i­mate­ly 25 per cent. In an earn­ings call held by Sagi­cor’s Group chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer and chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer, An­dre Mousseau, stat­ed that T&T’s ex­change rate had been “pret­ty sta­t­ic” for a while.

“In Ja­maica, our group busi­ness is a high­er pro­por­tion of our busi­ness than in the South­ern Caribbean, so it just sticks out more. And then the sec­ond thing is in the South­ern Caribbean—our mar­kets.

“The ma­jor­i­ty of our mar­kets ei­ther have ex­plic­it­ly pegged cur­ren­cies like Bar­ba­dos or im­plic­it­ly, so in the case of Trinidad where the ex­change rate has been pret­ty sta­t­ic for a num­ber of years, where­as Ja­maica’s ex­change rate, as we’ve said be­fore, has con­tin­ued to de­val­ue and so that af­fects their pur­chas­ing pow­er,” Mousseau stat­ed.