Ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of re­gion­al con­glom­er­ate ANSA McAL, Nor­man Sab­ga, does not doubt that the T&T In­sur­ance Ltd’s (TATIL) ac­qui­si­tion of Colo­nial Fire In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny Ltd (Colfire) will prove to be a “won­der­ful in­vest­ment.”

Sab­ga made the state­ment as the re­gion­al con­glom­er­ate on Mon­day pre­sent­ed its fi­nan­cial re­sults for 2022 to the me­dia.

One of the high­lights of the group’s fi­nan­cial state­ment, Sab­ga said, was the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of the ac­qui­si­tion of Colfire, which he laud­ed as “a sol­id ad­di­tion” to the group’s in­sur­ance port­fo­lio.

“This ac­qui­si­tion is an­tic­i­pat­ed to align the mu­tu­al strengths of these or­gan­i­sa­tions and en­sure that Colfire’s pol­i­cy­hold­ers ben­e­fit from the fi­nan­cial strength of our ANSA Mer­chant Bank Ltd Group,” Sab­ga said in his chair­man’s re­marks for AM­BL.

TATIL is a whol­ly-owned sub­sidiary of AM­BL, which is a pub­licly list­ed com­pa­ny that is ma­jor­i­ty owned by ANSA McAL.

“We are very proud of that ac­qui­si­tion. In fact, it came to mar­ket twice, we com­pet­ed for it twice and we are very, very proud of that ac­qui­si­tion and we have in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in our team head­ed up by Mr Musa Ibrahim. He has a re­mark­able group of peo­ple with him. We’ve in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in IT and we have no doubt that it is go­ing to prove to be a won­der­ful in­vest­ment,” Sab­ga told the me­dia.

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of ANSA McAL, An­tho­ny N Sab­ga III, al­so hailed the Colfire brand.

“Colfire is an amaz­ing brand so cer­tain­ly we will want to pre­serve that so there is no re­brand­ing,” he said.

Tatil’s chair­man Ray Sumairs­ingh said both Colfire and TATIL have strong brands.

“There are no plans to change that. Colfire is a strong brand. The colour is out­stand­ing as well and they have been around longer than TATIL. They are a size equal to TATIL and I think the im­por­tant thing is for us to use both com­pa­nies prop­er­ly in the mar­ket­place so that we don’t re­main num­ber two; we and be­come num­ber one. That is the in­ten­tion,” Sumairs­ingh said.

Ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics from Ernst and Young, in 2021 TATIL and Colfire were ranked sec­ond and third re­spec­tive­ly in this coun­try’s gen­er­al in­sur­ance seg­ment based on gross writ­ten pre­mi­ums.

TATIL ac­count­ed for $351 mil­lion while Colfire ac­count­ed for $263.8 mil­lion.

The com­po­si­tion and com­pet­i­tive land­scape of the gen­er­al in­sur­ance seg­ment had re­mained large­ly un­changed from the pre­vi­ous year.

“It is a big trans­for­ma­tion and great op­por­tu­ni­ty for the in­sur­ance di­vi­sion of ANSA McAL and we look for­ward to achiev­ing our fi­nan­cial re­turns as we have iden­ti­fied,” TATIL’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor M Musa Ibrahim said.

ANSA’s bank­ing and in­sur­ance seg­ment ac­count­ed for to­tal rev­enue of $1.057 bil­lion for the con­glom­er­ate in 2022.

“Our in­sur­ance of­fer­ing has grown quite sub­stan­tial­ly. We have al­most dou­bled our mar­ket share in cer­tain com­po­nents of the in­sur­ance busi­ness with the ac­qui­si­tion of Colfire,” CEO Sab­ga said.

TATIL is rat­ed A- (Ex­cel­lent) by the In­ter­na­tion­al Rat­ing Agency, AM Best.

Pur­suant to an of­fer and take-over bid cir­cu­lar dat­ed De­cem­ber 29, 2022 TATIL ac­quired and paid for 97.5 per cent of the is­sued and out­stand­ing or­di­nary shares of Colfire for the cash price of $20.32 per share in Feb­ru­ary.

A to­tal of 15,357,405 or­di­nary shares rep­re­sent­ed 97.5 per cent of the to­tal share­hold­ing in Colfire, putting the val­ue of the trans­ac­tion at $312 mil­lion.

TATIL record­ed a net loss of $117.8 mil­lion last year.

Its to­tal as­sets were val­ued at just un­der $4 bil­lion.

TATIL was es­tab­lished 60 years ago and is one of the first lo­cal­ly-owned in­sur­ance com­pa­nies.

In 2004, TATIL merged with ANSA Mer­chant Bank re­sult­ing in the con­sol­i­da­tion of the fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor of the ANSA McAL Group.

As part of the ANSA McAL, Tatil re­mains among the top pro­duc­ers in the group.

Colfire was in­cor­po­rat­ed in 1955.

Three years lat­er the com­pa­ny opened its doors in the heart of the cap­i­tal city.

“Its op­er­a­tions in Port-of-Spain were small but mighty as it boast­ed a team of high­ly trained and skilled un­der­writ­ers. They made it their du­ty to find the best ways to bring a high­er lev­el of ser­vice by re­spond­ing to cus­tomers’ ever-grow­ing needs. This would ul­ti­mate­ly lead to an ex­pan­sion of the com­pa­ny’s gen­er­al in­sur­ance port­fo­lio to in­clude cov­er­age for prop­er­ty, mo­tor, li­a­bil­i­ty and ma­rine as­sets,” its web­site states.

“This be­came the cat­a­lyst for Colo­nial Fire In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny Ltd’s change of name back in 1968. The com­pa­ny would from that mo­ment for­ward be known as Colfire,” it stat­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to abridged fi­nan­cial state­ments for Colfire for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2022, it made a net loss of $8.998 mil­lion.

Colfire’s to­tal as­sets were val­ued at $477 mil­lion.

CEO Sab­ga said at the heart of the growth an­tic­i­pat­ed from the ANSA McAL in­sur­ance sec­tor that now in­cludes Colfire is the dou­bling of mar­ket share.

“We have in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in tech­nol­o­gy in this space. The tech­nol­o­gy is in or­der to en­hance that cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence and bring new ca­pa­bil­i­ty and dig­i­tal qual­i­ty to that space al­low­ing for 24-hour ac­cess to clients and re­duced cost to op­er­at­ing in the medi­um to long term. So think Ge­ico,” he said.

“We’ve made those types of in­vest­ments to re­al­ly dif­fer­en­ti­ate our­selves go­ing for­ward,” he said.

CEO Sab­ga said that Guyana is al­so an area of growth that the con­glom­er­ate is fo­cus­ing on.

He said a sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ty for the con­glom­er­ate re­sides in near­by Guyana.

“We are al­ready present in Guyana with a sig­nif­i­cant piece of busi­ness around dis­tri­b­u­tion. Our au­to­mo­tive busi­ness is there for the last cou­ple of years. Our me­dia com­pa­ny owns the largest-reach­ing ra­dio fre­quen­cy in Guyana and our chem­i­cals busi­ness is al­ready sup­ply­ing re­tail-lev­el chlo­ral­ka­li prod­ucts such as bleach. We are al­so look­ing to go in­to the sup­ply of chlo­rine for clean wa­ter and wa­ter treat­ment there.

“We al­so have be­fore the Guyanese au­thor­i­ties and reg­u­la­tors at an ad­vanced stage we are hop­ing will be favourably looked on which is ap­pli­ca­tions on fi­nan­cial ser­vices prod­ucts in­to Guyana,” CEO Sab­ga said.

Sab­ga said the con­glom­er­ate is al­so look­ing to ex­tend its re­tail foot­print for Stan­dards in Guyana.

“Guyana is a very im­por­tant and rel­e­vant mar­ket for us,” CEO Sab­ga said.