Guardian Holdings Limited (GHL) is increasing its investment in technological solutions to improve its efficiencies while driving further value for its customers and shareholders.

The Trinidad-based insurance conglomerate is currently working on a wide range of solutions while consolidating different areas of its back-office processes including the migration of the individual health and group life portfolios to a new Oracle insurance system for its Jamaican and Trinidadian businesses by the end of 2025. The expectation is that the new system will make insurance administration easier. This will also be complemented by the onboarding of Guardian Life Limited (GLL) clients to a group’s customer portal that will allow them to see all their Guardian business from the single platform.

“We have it [digital health card] fully operational in Trinidad and we’re now looking to roll it out in the rest of the Caribbean. It is something that we need some infrastructure to replace at various healthcare providers in order for it to happen. We’re still looking to do greater innovation, outsourcing technology. We are preparing for the future with this very high-tech technology that will propel us away to the future as we go along,” said Group Head of Life, Health and Pension (LH&P) Eric Hosin at GHL’s investor briefing on Friday.

GHL currently has digital health cards available in Trinidad & Tobago and is looking to bring that solution to other parts of the Caribbean as part of its horizon one digital solutions. The insurer has a three-pronged strategic focus for its business. Horizon two currently involves capturing additional market share and driving innovation through the region.

A key focus under horizon two is the group product factory which will allow for the review and innovation of existing products that is enabled by business intelligence solutions. Brandon Deyalsingh is currently the executive leading this initiative.

“As I mentioned, we have over an 8–10-year period a US$45-million (TT$306-million) investment in a new Oracle platform for our life, health and pension (LHP) business. That requires us to make payments which are capital investments. As we go forward and make capital investments, sometimes that will exceed net operating cash flows. It’s meant to take us through our next period of strategic investment. Some of this [capital] will go into each of our different entities to support the capex that they need to continue on their efficiency and product development journey,” said GHL Chief Executive Officer Ian Chinapoo on the company’s recently announced TT$450 million (J$10.28 billion) loan.

GHL secured the financing on March 21 with the loan maturing in 2029.

GHL’s 2023 performance saw its revenue increase 27 per cent to TT$7.57 billion with Trinidad making up 43 per cent of this performance followed by Jamaica whose share grew from 24 to 26 per cent. However, while Jamaica’s profit after tax contribution remains unchanged year over year at 57 per cent, that translated to a jump from TT$271.36 million to TT$399.57 million (J$9.10 billion).

“The Jamaica team has a lot going for them in terms of their investment book, quality of the book, the interest rate environment. On the life, health and pension side, they have a heavy focus on their core products, the risk-based products which are very profitable for us as an insurer versus the non-risk-based products and expense management. Trinidad taking the lead on revenue, but profit has always been on the Jamaica side,” said GHL Group Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Samanta Saugh on the group’s revenue and profit mix.

Despite the positive gains recognised during 2023, the company is facing challenges in selling off developed units in real estate. The Cambridge property on Musgrave Avenue, Kingston, continues to advertise a $2-million discount to entice buyers to purchase the remaining units. GLL developed the Camden and Cambridge properties between 2019 to 2023 where they sold $3.70 billion of units during 2022.

GLL had initially kept back some units to sell at the end of the development life cycle. Hosin mentioned that there were 50 unsold units composed of studio and one-bedroom units in August 2023 and explained on Friday that just a little more than 40 were still unsold. The units are priced in United States dollars (USD) with the current discount worth about 10 per cent of a studio.

“We are still optimistic. We continue to see persons purchasing almost every week. There are still some things that we’re making adjustments to improve. We are working with our architects, and we should see those things leading to even greater increase in sales. We feel pretty comfortable in offering that on the product at this time. We’re very pleased where we are with our real estate, and we have some land that we’ve banked both in Kingston and outside of Kingston for future development,” Hosin said in response to queries about the units.

Although there is some worry surrounding the reinsurance market, GHL feels comfortable as it get’s ready to renew policies on May 1 compared to other firms whose reinsurance agreements went into force on January 1.

“We have had a lot of success in convincing or demonstrating to reinsurers that we provide a different sort of result to reinsurers. So, we want to be treated differently and so far, we’re in the midst of renewal and we’re already seeing where we’re getting better terms and conditions than some of our competitors. We were able to get enough [reinsurance] to grow and we have a competitive advantage because of the spread and quality of portfolio presented to reinsurers,” stated Dean Romanay, president of Guardian General Insurance Limited.

Saugh will become the CEO of Guardian Life of the Caribbean Limited (GLC) on June 1. Keesha Sahadeo will become the GHL Group CFO effective May 1. Saugh was previously GLC’s CFO before ascending to the Group CFO rank in May 2022 when David Maraj resigned. Eric Hosin is listed as the acting GLC president on the company’s website.

GHL will host its hybrid annual general meeting (AGM) on May 2 at 1:30 pm (12:30 pm Jamaican time). One key item on the agenda includes the election of National Commercial Bank Jamaica Limited CEO Bruce Bowen as a non-executive director of GHL for a term of three years at the close of the meeting. NCB Financial Group Limited (NCBFG) Chairman Michael Lee-Chin and Imtiaz Ahamad will also be subject to re-election for fixed one and three-year terms, respectively.

GHL will pay a dividend of TT$0.53 totalling TT$122.97 million on May 1 to shareholders on record as of April 17. This means that its direct parent company NCB Global Holdings Limited will receive TT$75.96 million based on its 61.77 per cent stake in GHL. It should be noted that the Trinidad & Tobago Stock Exchange (TTSE) goes to a T+2 settlement time on April 15 while the Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE) moves to T+1 on May 27.

GHL’s stock price closed Friday at J$369.50/TT$19 which left it up four per cent on the JSE and 0.37 per cent on the TTSE with a market capitalisation of TT$4.41 billion.