GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Sco­tiaL­ife T&T, more pop­u­lar­ly known as Sco­tia In­sur­ance re­cent­ly marked its 20th year of op­er­a­tions- a jour­ney fu­elled by am­bi­tion, in­no­va­tion and a shared vi­sion, as de­scribed by Jar­od Per­ry­man, Sco­tiaL­ife T&T’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, who shared some in­sights at an event which was held at the Brix ho­tel in Port-of-Spain.

“Back in 2004, we start­ed with a team of sev­en em­ploy­ees, as­sets of $97 mil­lion, and our first year saw rev­enues of $39 mil­lion with net in­come af­ter tax of $2.9 mil­lion.

“At the end of our 2023 fi­nan­cial year, Sco­tiaL­ife proud­ly post­ed rev­enues of $532 mil­lion, net in­come af­ter tax of $124 mil­lion, achieved with an as­set base of $2.68 bil­lion and our client base grow­ing to over 43,000 val­ued clients,” Per­ry­man de­tailed.

He added that over the last 20 years, the en­ti­ty di­ver­si­fied its of­fer­ings, start­ing with its two flag­ship so­lu­tions, Sco­tia Se­cure and Sco­tia Se­lect, ex­pand­ing now to sev­en client-cen­tric so­lu­tions.

Sco­tiaL­ife T&T most re­cent­ly launched Sco­tia El­e­vate, a so­lu­tion which al­lows clients to ac­cess up to $500,000 worth of in­sur­ance cov­er­age with­out the need of a med­ical ex­am or test­ing, en­hanced by the abil­i­ty to par­tic­i­pate in in­vest­ments, based on the client’s risk ap­petite.

“We have adapt­ed to the ever-evolv­ing land­scape of our in­dus­try, lever­ag­ing emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies and trends to stay ahead of the curve, demon­strat­ed by the launch of our Dig­i­tal So­lace so­lu­tion on the Sco­tia Caribbean mo­bile app, mak­ing it pos­si­ble for clients to ful­fil the pur­chase of an in­sur­ance so­lu­tion, ful­ly dig­i­tal, from needs as­sess­ment to pol­i­cy de­liv­ery.

“In this post-pan­dem­ic re­al­i­ty, our clients have in­di­cat­ed they want to en­gage with us dif­fer­ent­ly, many favour­ing dig­i­tal ser­vice de­liv­ery and we have lis­tened at­ten­tive­ly. We now pro­vide our clients with the abil­i­ty to ac­cess sev­er­al pol­i­cy ad­min­is­tra­tion ser­vices vir­tu­al­ly, en­hanc­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness,” Per­ry­man out­lined.

How­ev­er, suc­cess is not mere­ly mea­sured by fi­nan­cial mile­stones.

Ac­cord­ing to Per­ry­man, it is de­fined by the re­la­tion­ships built, the lives touched, and the im­pact on com­mu­ni­ties.

“Our com­mit­ment to in­tegri­ty, di­ver­si­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty has guid­ed our ac­tions and con­tin­ues to shape our lega­cy,” he as­sured.

On a wider scale, he not­ed that re­cent­ly, the glob­al in­sur­ance in­dus­try has been im­pact­ed by changes to ac­count­ing stan­dards, a reg­u­la­to­ry land­scape that Per­ry­man as­sured con­tin­ues to en­sure the or­gan­i­sa­tion is held to the high­est stan­dards of ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Mean­while, Gayle Pa­zos, se­nior vice-pres­i­dent and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Sco­tia­bank T&T, not­ed that co­in­ci­den­tal­ly, Sco­tia­bank T&T al­so cel­e­brates its 70th an­niver­sary this year.

“It was 70 years ago, in 1954, that we opened our first branch in Trinidad and To­ba­go at the Cor­ner of Aber­crom­by Street and In­de­pen­dence Square (then Ma­rine Square North) in Port-of-Spain. And it wasn’t long be­fore we be­gan to grow our lo­cal op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing the es­tab­lish­ment of Sco­tia Life in 2004,” she re­count­ed.

As the years went by, Pa­zos said the in­sur­ance seg­ment has con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the bank’s suc­cess.

Most re­cent­ly, she said in 2023 the in­sur­ance seg­ment achieved an­oth­er year of strong per­for­mance, with its net in­come af­ter tax in­creas­ing by 24 per cent to $124 mil­lion.

“Core in­sur­ance rev­enue in­creased by 39 per cent, our best per­for­mance in re­cent years, dri­ven by growth in our gross pre­mi­ums re­flect­ing our cus­tomer’s con­fi­dence in our prod­ucts,” Pa­zos added.

Re­gard­ing its dig­i­tal fo­cus, she said Sco­tia In­sur­ance con­tin­ues to make strides dig­i­tal­ly by en­abling pol­i­cy­hold­ers to process an ex­pand­ed ar­ray of ser­vice re­quests on­line, not­ing that the key to the suc­cess of Sco­tia In­sur­ance can be at­trib­uted to the strong part­ner­ships with its clients.

Look­ing ahead, Pa­zos out­lined, “As we look to the fu­ture we do so with pride and con­fi­dence. This an­niver­sary is not on­ly about look­ing back at the past but al­so look­ing for­ward to where we want to go as an in­sti­tu­tion. A lot is chang­ing in the world. We are more con­nect­ed than ever, and clients are ex­pect­ing faster, more ef­fi­cient, and bet­ter so­lu­tions for their fi­nan­cial needs. For us at Sco­tia­bank and Sco­tia In­sur­ance we are al­so on a jour­ney, get­ting clos­er to our clients to meet their chang­ing needs.”

She al­so as­sured that the or­gan­i­sa­tion will con­tin­ue to in­vest in tech­nol­o­gy, peo­ple, prod­ucts and ser­vices to en­sure it com­pete ef­fec­tive­ly and grow with clients in­to the fu­ture.

Sco­tia In­sur­ance

Sco­tiaL­ife T&T Ltd, a sub­sidiary of Sco­tia­bank T&T Ltd, was launched on April 15, 2004.

At the launch of Sco­tiaL­ife T&T, for­mer gov­er­nor, Cen­tral Bank Ewart Williams had not­ed that while there have been oth­er ex­cur­sions in the field of Ban­cAs­sur­ance, the mod­el of a bank ac­tu­al­ly es­tab­lish­ing an in­sur­ance com­pa­ny was new in T&T.

Williams said Sco­tia­bank de­served cred­it for at­tempt­ing to ex­ploit the syn­er­gies and economies of scale to be de­rived from the sell­ing of bank­ing prod­ucts to in­sur­ance clients and vice ver­sa.

“Scotibank has been in the fore­front of this process of fi­nan­cial sec­tor evo­lu­tion, for ex­am­ple, through ini­tia­tives in the area of tele­bank­ing ser­vices and your in­no­va­tions in au­to, mort­gage and trade fi­nanc­ing. Sco­tia­bank should al­so be com­mend­ed on its ef­forts to en­hance cus­tomer ser­vice.” Williams said.

He al­so not­ed that over the years Sco­tia­bank demon­strat­ed that it has the right cus­tomer fo­cus and the right cor­po­rate cul­ture, adding that Sco­tiaL­ife came from a “good fam­i­ly” and, as such, was a most wel­comed ad­di­tion to the in­sur­ance in­dus­try.

The for­mer gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank al­so re­mind­ed in­sur­ance sales of­fi­cers that po­ten­tial clients were al­most al­ways at a tremen­dous dis­ad­van­tage, rel­a­tive to the com­pa­ny and its rep­re­sen­ta­tives, on in­sur­ance mat­ters.

Williams ad­vised them that true pro­fes­sion­als al­ways re­sist any temp­ta­tion to use this asym­met­ric re­la­tion­ship to their ad­van­tage and not­ed that ob­vi­ous pre-req­ui­sites to good mar­ket con­duct prac­tices were the pro­vi­sion of in­ten­sive and rel­e­vant train­ing (that em­pha­sised, for in­stance, prod­uct knowl­edge, cus­tomer ser­vice, as well as needs-based sell­ing), and the right type of cor­po­rate cul­ture.

He al­so re­mind­ed that good mar­ket con­duct has sev­er­al di­men­sions.

In ad­di­tion to the prompt set­tle­ment of claims, Williams said this in­clud­ed hon­est and clear ad­ver­tis­ing, in­clud­ing the frank dis­clo­sure of the fine print and fair prod­uct pric­ing; an ef­fi­cient mech­a­nism to meet the in­for­ma­tion needs of pol­i­cy hold­ers; and a trans­par­ent, eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble dis­pute res­o­lu­tion process.