R Danny Williams beamed with pride on Sunday at seeing his name engraved on the imposing building on Barbados Avenue in New Kingston.

Sagicor Life Jamaica (SLJ) dedicated its 12-storey headquarters in his honour. The legendary Jamaican businessman founded the insurance giant as Life of Jamaica (LOJ) just over 42 years ago, June 1, 1970.

“We started with a vision and we got there,” said Williams at the dedication ceremony, attended by the cream of the local business community.

“We continue to do well and be the company that considers Jamaica first. I am very proud that this company that has meant so much to the country will have my name on it,” he said to thunderous applauds from audience members inside what is now called the R Danny Williams Building.

The success of LOJ (now Sagicor Life Jamaica) over the past four decades lies upon the company’s innovativeness and genuine drive to uplift Jamaicans, Williams said. He heaped praises on his mentor Douglas Fletcher and businessmen Peter Rousseau, Herbert Hall, Donald Davidson, Adrian Foreman, among others, for helping to mold the company’s corporate culture.

“We all came together and said we are going to form a company that we will be proud of and, above all, a company that will help to make Jamaica a better place,” said Williams, noting that the company’s slogan at inception was “Life of Jamaica for a better life”.

“That’s what drove us. We developed things that made us stand out in Jamaica,” Williams added, noting that LOJ was the first local financial institution to develop pooled pension funds, worker mortgage programmes and were “prepared to loan money anywhere in Jamaica”.

Against this background, the company had the support of the entire population and enjoyed tremendous success during the 1970s and 1980s, he said.

LOJ, however, encountered a setback in the 1990s financial meltdown, which resulted in Government, and eventually Barbados Mutual Life Assurance (now Sagicor Group), becoming the principal shareholder in the company.

“It was not our fault. We had a great book of business, we had great pension plans and we were well balanced in terms of our securities and had appropriate investments,” said Williams. “But when you get into a situation, like what we got into in the 1990s, when you still have the liabilities but the assets that you have are suddenly worth only half of what they were worth a year before; when you see the meltdown of the stock market and real estate, and the significant increase in interest rates etc… we found ourselves in a hole,” he said.

But the company was able to recover and has not looked back, noted Williams.

“Once the equity went in, we went back to our profitable path and we have been on that profitable path ever since,” he said.

SLJ’s current president and CEO, Richard Byles, praised Williams for his stewardship over the many years he led the company as president.

“As the current CEO of SLJ, I am the first to say that this very successful company, Sagicor Life Jamaica Limited, is firmly set on the foundation that Danny famously envisioned under a coconut tree in Ocho Rios and which became a reality on June 1, 1970,” said Byles, who has led the firm for the past eight years.

“He built it into the largest life insurance company in Jamaica, known for introducing innovative pro-ducts like Pooled Pension Funds and the Universal Life policy. He fashioned the best sales team in the Caribbean, and propelled the company into becoming a major player in the property and equity markets,” Byles said, adding that “the foundation Danny built goes beyond even these tremendous accomplishments, for perhaps his most enduring legacy is the winning spirit, optimism and self-confidence he imbued in his management and sales teams.”