NEW JER­SEY–AM Best has af­firmed the fi­nan­cial strength rat­ing (FSR) of A- (Ex­cel­lent) and the is­suer cred­it rat­ings (ICR) of "a-" of Guardian Life of the Caribbean Ltd (GLOC) and Guardian Gen­er­al In­sur­ance Ltd (GGIL). Con­cur­rent­ly, the rat­ing agency has af­firmed the ICR of "bbb-" of Guardian Hold­ings Ltd (GHL), a pub­licly trad­ed hold­ing com­pa­ny and the ul­ti­mate par­ent of GLOC and GGIL. The out­look for all rat­ings is sta­ble. GHL is list­ed on the T&T Stock Ex­change.

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. Nev­er­the­less, AM Best notes that the out­stand­ing lev­el of fi­nan­cial lever­age at GHL re­mains some­what el­e­vat­ed rel­a­tive to to­tal cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion.

More­over, GHL's ex­po­sure to Ja­maica through its life and non-life op­er­a­tions re­mains an area of con­cern.

The rat­ings of GLOC ac­knowl­edge its strate­gic po­si­tion with­in the GHL group, strong com­pet­i­tive po­si­tion in the T&T mar­kets, con­sis­tent­ly pos­i­tive op­er­at­ing re­sults from its life and pen­sion and health in­sur­ance lines and its ad­e­quate lev­el of risk-ad­just­ed cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion.

Off­set­ting these pos­i­tive rat­ing fac­tors are GLOC's mod­er­ate­ly in­creased in­sur­ance ben­e­fits and claims ex­pens­es, the im­pact of con­tin­u­ing volatil­i­ty in the lo­cal, re­gion­al and glob­al eq­ui­ty mar­kets and the com­pet­i­tive and ma­ture na­ture of the T&T in­sur­ance mar­ket­place. (BUSI­NESS WIRE)