Sean Nero

Track and Field in T&T will al­ways have a friend in Sagi­cor Gen­er­al In­sur­ance (SGI) says Dyan Loutan-Ali, vice-pres­i­dent of lo­cal op­er­a­tions. She made the an­nounce­ment at the com­pa­ny's tenth an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion held at Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad on Dock Road in Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Sagi­cor Gen­er­al was a ti­tle spon­sor of the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Ad­min­is­tra­tions (NAAA) Se­nior Open Cham­pi­onships held at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Na­tion­al Sta­di­um in Wood­brook last June. On that oc­ca­sion Richard Thomp­son broke his own na­tion­al record of 9.85 by three hun­dredths of a sec­ond�a 9.82 sec­onds run in the 100-me­tre re-match against fel­low Olympic medal­list Ke­ston Bled­man.

The spec­tac­u­lar per­for­mance earned him the ho­n­our as the ninth fastest ath­lete in the his­to­ry of the sport as he went on to hold the world's top spot for two weeks as de­clared by the IAAF. Thomp­son is now ranked sec­ond in the world. Justin Gatlin of the Unit­ed States was able to bet­ter Thomp­son's time by two hun­dredths in Lau­sanne Di­a­mond League meet on Ju­ly 3.

Michelle Lee Ahye was al­so praised hav­ing won her 100-me­tre at the Sagi­cor Se­nior Open Cham­pi­onships. As of yes­ter­day, her stand­ing re­mained un­changed as the world's num­ber one since that per­for­mance. These were among the top-per­form­ing ath­letes who have con­vinced the re­gion­al in­sur­ance gi­ant to fo­cus its cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty on sport and, in this in­stance, track and field.

Loutan-Ali said her com­pa­ny con­tin­ued to grow its mar­ket share and it would keep rein­vest­ing in the sport, which con­tin­ued to pro­duce world cham­pi­on medal­lists at every in­ter­na­tion­al cham­pi­onship. Loutan-Ali said T&T op­er­a­tions of SGI re­mained strong and con­se­quent­ly served as the largest rev­enue gen­er­a­tor of all its branch­es in the net­work across the Caribbean.

"Com­pared to oth­er com­pa­nies that wrote a sim­i­lar in­come the fact that SGI achieved so much with less than 100 in head count was in it­self a great ac­com­plish­ment," Loutan-Ali said.

"To­day, T&T counts for 58 per cent of the en­tire Sagi­cor Gen­er­al un­der­writ­ing port­fo­lio. The T&T branch has suc­cess­ful­ly con­tributed to the rapid growth of the com­pa­ny. Pri­or to the open­ing of the branch in 2004, SGI record­ed a gross pre­mi­um in­come of $145 mil­lion dol­lars.

"To­day, the com­pa­ny writes 396 mil­lion. In ad­di­tion to the pre­mi­um growth, the branch, through its pru­dent fi­nan­cial man­age­ment, has con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the growth on SGI's bal­ance sheet which stood at $659 mil­lion at the end of 2013. It is no sur­prise that SGI has main­tained an AM Best rat­ing of A-Ex­cel­lent since June 2002."

Loutan-Ali added: "To im­prove the lives of the peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ties in which we op­er­ate rep­re­sents a sec­tion of our vi­sion which we at Sagi­cor Gen­er­al are very pas­sion­ate about.

"It is for this rea­son we have spon­sored events such as the NAAA. This par­tic­u­lar event has had our sup­port since 2004 when we start­ed op­er­a­tions in T&T. We be­lieve that these games open many doors for our ath­letes and in par­tic­u­lar our youth, through schol­ar­ships, en­dorse­ments and op­por­tu­ni­ties to rep­re­sent our coun­try at one of the high­est lev­el."

To the ben­e­fit of fu­ture ath­letes and the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty as well, the Sagi­cor of­fi­cial said three years ago, the com­pa­ny took the de­ci­sion to adopt projects in com­mu­ni­ties that would en­hance the lev­el of ed­u­ca­tion to pri­ma­ry school chil­dren. So far, the in­sur­er pro­vid­ed air con­di­tion­ing to the Bras­so and Ca­paro Pri­ma­ry Schools and re­fur­bished and re­stocked the li­brary at the Salazar Trace Pri­ma­ry School in Point Fortin.

"The suc­cess of these ini­tia­tives was made pos­si­ble be­cause of the con­tri­bu­tion and ded­i­ca­tion of per­son­al time by both Sagi­cor Gen­er­al and Sagi­cor Life staff. In 2013, we part­nered with Sagi­cor Life with the Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, En­gi­neer­ing and Math­e­mat­ics (STEM) Pro­gramme in an ef­fort to pro­mote sci­ence in sec­ondary schools through­out the Caribbean coun­tries in which the Sagi­cor Group has a pres­ence. This was quite suc­cess­ful and we will be con­tin­u­ing this ini­tia­tive," Loutan-Ali said.