Nadaleen Singh

ANSA Mer­chant Bank Ltd is re­port­ing that the vol­ume of its new busi­ness was 22 per cent high­er in 2011 com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year. "For this year, at least up to April, av­er­ages are 17 per cent high­er from where we left off last year. We are hap­py with the pos­i­tive mo­men­tum trend," ANSA Mer­chant Bank man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Chip Sa Gomes told the com­pa­ny's an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing, which was held at the Tatil build­ing in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

The bank al­so record­ed $183.6 mil­lion in prof­it af­ter tax for the fi­nan­cial year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2011. The ANSA Mer­chant Bank is a pub­licly-trad­ed com­pa­ny com­pris­ing of the ANSA Fi­nance and Mer­chant Bank, Tatil and Tatil Life In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny Ltd.

In its An­nu­al Re­port 2011, Chair­man of the ANSA Mer­chant Bank Ltd, Dr An­tho­ny N Sab­ga said: "The en­vi­ron­ment has im­pact­ed our re­sults as ev­i­denced by pro­vi­sions tak­en in our port­fo­lios. How­ev­er our re­sults show that we have been able to find op­por­tu­ni­ties for growth and we are sat­is­fied with our re­sults which con­tin­ue to im­prove."

The bank paid out fi­nal div­i­dend of $0.85 per or­di­nary share which is con­sis­tent with what was paid in 2010. Sa Gomes, said the ef­fi­cien­cy ra­tio changed due to strate­gies which were in­tro­duced. The ra­tio shows how ef­fi­cient­ly the com­pa­ny is man­ag­ing its costs to dol­lar rev­enue.

"A low­er ra­tio is a bet­ter per­for­mance so we had a change from 16 per cent to 20 per cent most­ly due to some mar­ket­ing strate­gies that we had in the mer­chant bank re­lat­ed to as­set fi­nance port­fo­lio," he said. "In our gen­er­al in­sur­ance com­pa­ny for 2011, for the first time, we sur­passed $300 mil­lion in pre­mi­um in­come. One of the main tenets to the Gen­er­al com­pa­ny's per­for­mance was a well-man­aged claims ra­tio, claims costs were down 16 per cent in 2011 ver­sus 2010.

"There was high­er pro­por­tion­ate in­crease in prof­itabil­i­ty point­ing to a bet­ter over­all man­age­ment of over­heads," he said. Giv­ing a sum­ma­ry of the first quar­ter of 2012 he said prof­its in­creased. "On a con­sol­i­dat­ed sum­ma­ry ba­sis, the to­tal in­come was on­ly slight­ly up from where we were last year, but to due to low­er claims cost and ex­pense man­age­ment, our op­er­at­ing prof­it is sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er, $71 mil­lion is our op­er­at­ing prof­it com­pared to $57.7 mil­lion in 2011," he said. ANSA Mer­chant Bank Ltd marked its 35th An­niver­sary of In­cor­po­ra­tion on March 3, 2012.