Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

That T&T is among three coun­tries in the Amer­i­c­as that has shown above av­er­age gross do­mes­tic prod­uct (GDP) growth and of­fers very sta­ble in­vest­ment and cur­ren­cy cli­mates is one of the ma­jor fac­tors which led to Pan Amer­i­can?Life In­sur­ance Group (PALIG) ac­quir­ing MetLife/Amer­i­can Life and Gern­er­al In­sur­ance (Al­gi­co).

So said Jose Su­quet, chair­man of the board, pres­i­dent and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of PALIG, in re­spond­ing to an e-mailed ques­tion about PALIG's plans for its T&T ac­qui­si­tion. PALIG com­plet­ed the ac­qui­si­tion of Al­gi­co in T&T, along with oth­er re­gion­al sub­sidiaries of Al­gi­co par­ent, Al­i­co in the Cay­man is­lands, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Pana­ma, St Lu­cia.

Al­i­co, the par­ent of Al­gi­co, was sold to the gi­ant Unit­ed States in­sur­er, MetLife, in No­vem­ber 2010 for US$16 bil­lion, ac­cord­ing to a Guardian Au­gust 3 re­port.

In an e-mailed re­sponse last week Thurs­day, Su­quet said, "This ac­qui­si­tion makes PALIG, an al­ready fi­nan­cial­ly strong hold­ing com­pa­ny, even stronger through the ad­di­tion of a broad­er, high-qual­i­ty as­set port­fo­lio. In ad­di­tion, the com­pa­ny now is able to fur­ther spread its ge­o­graph­ic risk-pro­vid­ing it with greater di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and economies of scale.

Su­quet said the T&T, Pana­ma and Cos­ta Ri­ca mar­kets have shown above av­er­age GDP growth, and of­fer very sta­ble in­vest­ment and cur­ren­cy cli­mates. "The is­lands of the low­er Caribbean are al­so recog­nised for hav­ing among the high­est GDP per capi­ta rates in all of the Amer­i­c­as."

He said, "Pan-Amer­i­can Life, through its 100-year his­to­ry, has es­tab­lished a track record as one of the most fi­nan­cial­ly sound in­sur­ance com­pa­nies. Our bal­ance sheet, which is even stronger now than be­fore the fi­nan­cial cri­sis, pro­vides us the fi­nan­cial flex­i­bil­i­ty to com­plete this ac­qui­si­tion and con­tin­ue to grow our lead­ing pres­ence through­out the Amer­i­c­as. "Our as­sets are now US$2.9 bil­lion," Su­quet said.

Asked about Al­gi­co's rein­sur­ers and if PALIG plans to change them, Su­quet said, "PALIG cur­rent­ly works with top pro­fes­sion­al rein­sur­ance com­pa­nies with an "A" rat­ing or high­er. At this time, we do not have plans on chang­ing our part­ner­ships with the rein­sur­er."

He said the Al­gi­co trans­ac­tion ex­pands the group's prod­uct of­fer­ings with­in the life and health seg­ments by adding per­son­al ac­ci­dent and health lines and adds an agency dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work of 550 agents and man­agers in the Caribbean and Pana­ma. "Pan Amer­i­can Life will be ranked in the top three among life and/or health car­ri­ers in near­ly all the mar­kets in which we com­pete out­side of the Unit­ed States," Su­quet said.

When asked about the strate­gic ra­tio­nale be­hind the ac­qui­si­tion, he said, "This pur­chase ac­cel­er­ates PAILIG's strat­e­gy to be­come the pre­mier life and health in­sur­ance provider in the An­dean, Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean re­gions. It al­so pre­sent­ed a unique op­por­tu­ni­ty to ac­quire as­sets that fit well in­to our busi­ness strat­e­gy and com­ple­ment our ex­ist­ing op­er­a­tions in the re­gion."

Asked what im­pact the Unit­ed States elec­tions would have on US in­vestem­nts in the Caribbean, he said, "We do not ex­pect the re­cent US Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion to have any im­pact on Pan-Amer­i­can Life's In­ter­na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions or our In­vest­ments." Su­quet stat­ed that re-brand­ing ex­er­cis­es have al­ready be­gan on the Al­gi­co head of­fice in T&T.