AM Best has af­firmed the fi­nan­cial strength rat­ing of A- (Ex­cel­lent) and the is­suer cred­it rat­ings (ICR) of "a-" of Guardian Life of the Caribbean Lim­it­ed (GLOC) and Guardian Gen­er­al In­sur­ance Lim­it­ed (GGIL). The rat­ing agency has al­so af­firmed the ICR of "bbb-" of Guardian Hold­ings Lim­it­ed (GHL).AM Best said in a re­lease: "The af­fir­ma­tion of the rat­ings of GLOC and GGIL re­flect GHL's fair­ly sta­ble lever­age po­si­tion, con­sol­i­dat­ed bal­ance sheet strength and pre­mi­um growth over the past sev­er­al years.

The con­sis­tent prof­itabil­i­ty of GLOC and GGIL, which are core in­sur­ance sub­sidiaries of GHL, en­hances the over­all strength of GHL's bal­ance sheet and debt ser­vic­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ties." The rat­ing agency said GLOC was recog­nised for its strate­gic po­si­tion with­in the GHL group, strong com­pet­i­tive po­si­tion in the T&T mar­ket, con­sis­tent­ly pos­i­tive op­er­at­ing re­sults from its life and pen­sion and health in­sur­ance lines and its ad­e­quate lev­el of risk-ad­just­ed cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion.

GGIL was ac­knowl­edged in its rat­ings as lead­ing re­gion­al mar­ket pres­ence, his­tor­i­cal­ly prof­itable op­er­at­ing per­for­mance and more than ad­e­quate risk-ad­just­ed cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion.Ad­di­tion­al­ly, GGIL's strong re­turn met­rics and un­der­writ­ing per­for­mance com­pare fa­vor­ably with its prop­er­ty/ca­su­al­ty Caribbean peers.

Guardian Hold­ings CEO, Ravi Tewari said: "The con­sis­ten­cy in our AM Best rat­ing of both GLOC and GGIL is tes­ti­mo­ny to our un­flinch­ing fo­cus on qual­i­ty and ef­fi­cien­cy in our op­er­a­tions across Guardian Group."Our com­mit­ment is to core busi­ness, in core mar­kets with­in the Eng­lish and Dutch speak­ing Caribbean, with the best ser­vice avail­able in our in­dus­try."