Im­proved in­vest­ment re­turns has yield­ed a 40 per cent in­crease on be­fore tax prof­its for Guardian Hold­ings Lim­it­ed (GHL) in the first half of the year.

Re­sults post­ed yes­ter­day on the T&T Stock Ex­change show that for the pe­ri­od end­ed June 30, the group's prof­it be­fore tax­a­tion amount­ed to $226 mil­lion, an in­crease of $65 mil­lion over the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2016. T

Chair­man Arthur Lok Jack said GHL's in­vest­ment port­fo­lio gen­er­at­ed "a more than sat­is­fac­to­ry re­turn." Net in­come from in­vest­ing ac­tiv­i­ties in­creased by $115 mil­lion to $470 mil­lion from $355 mil­lion.

"Of note, this in­cludes a sig­nif­i­cant swing in in­come from se­cu­ri­ties as we have com­menced re­de­ploy­ing our stock of low yield­ing short-term in­stru­ments to high­er-yield­ing longterm in­stru­ments. We will con­tin­ue this shift in the com­po­si­tion of our in­vest­ment port­fo­lio to the ben­e­fit of our share­hold­ers and pol­i­cy­hold­ers as we con­tin­ue to ac­tive­ly seek at­trac­tive but sta­ble long-term in­come streams," Lok Jack said.

Ac­cord­ing to the chair­man, the group's net in­come from in­sur­ance ac­tiv­i­ties of $259 mil­lion–com­pared with $297 mil­lion in 2015–was ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed by an un­usu­al­ly high in­ci­dence of fire and large mo­tor claims dur­ing the last quar­ter. Net earned pre­mi­ums for the pe­ri­od re­mained flat com­pared to the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year.

Lok Jack said: "This is as a re­sult of per­sis­tent "soft" mar­ket rates in the mo­tor and prop­er­ty class­es of busi­ness which de­pressed net pre­mi­um in­come. With re­spect to our long-term busi­ness seg­ment, we have re-di­rect­ed our sales ef­fort to "pro­tec­tion" prod­ucts and away from low­er-mar­gin "sav­ings" prod­ucts. At the same time we elect­ed not to re­new one large in­ter­na­tion­al health re-in­sur­ance treaty.

"These mea­sures, aimed at im­prov­ing over­all prof­it mar­gins, should bear fruit over the medi­um-term but con­tributed to the re­duc­tion in to­tal net pre­mi­um in­come."

He added that GHL's bro­ker­age ac­tiv­i­ties in the Nether­lands and Dutch Caribbean pro­duced good growth in prof­its and pro­vid­ed a stream of rev­enue with­out ex­po­sure from in­sur­ance risks. Net in­come from bro­ker­age ac­tiv­i­ties in­creased from $3 mil­lion in 2015 to $10 mil­lion in 2016, pro­vid­ing a good re­turn on in­vest­ment.

Lok Jack said the board is sat­is­fied with the group's half-year per­for­mance and "de­spite ad­verse eco­nom­ic head­winds, looks for­ward to im­proved op­er­at­ing mar­gins and in­creased in­vest­ment re­turns."

An in­ter­im div­i­dend of $0.21 per com­mon share (2015: $0.19) has been rec­om­mend­ed by GHL's di­rec­tors.