ANSA Mer­chant Bank Lim­it­ed had a “ro­bust” sec­ond quar­ter, which caused the com­pa­ny to re­bound sig­nif­i­cant­ly from its first quar­ter re­sults, chair­man A Nor­man Sab­ga has said.

Sab­ga made the state­ment in the chair­man’s re­port of ANSA Mer­chant Bank’s unau­dit­ed in­ter­im re­sults for the quar­ter end­ed June 30, 2020.

“ANSA Mer­chant Bank Lim­it­ed (“the Bank”), Con­sol­i­dat­ed Fi­nance Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (“CFC”), Trinidad and To­ba­go In­sur­ance Lim­it­ed (“TATIL”) and Tatil Life As­sur­ance Lim­it­ed (“TATIL Life”), (col­lec­tive­ly “the Bank Group”), earned a con­sol­i­dat­ed prof­it be­fore tax of $95 mil­lion for the three month pe­ri­od end­ed June 30,2020 as com­pared to $73 mil­lion in the same quar­ter of last year, which rep­re­sent­ed an in­crease of 30 per cent year over year,” Sab­ga stat­ed.

“How­ev­er, the con­sol­i­dat­ed PBT for the six-month pe­ri­od end­ed June 30, 2020 still trails 2019, at $46 mil­lion ver­sus $158 mil­lion last year, due to the loss­es sus­tained in the first quar­ter as a re­sult of the pan­dem­ic,” he stat­ed.

Sab­ga said that the ef­fects of COVID-19 con­tin­ues to im­pact T&T and in re­sponse the com­pa­ny has “re-en­gi­neered” its busi­ness process­es to achieve bet­ter re­sults for all stake­hold­ers.

“Our Bar­ba­dos op­er­a­tion, Con­sol­i­dat­ed Fi­nance Com­pa­ny Ltd, con­tin­ues to build its re­tail book of busi­ness, al­beit slow­ly, re­flect­ing the eco­nom­ic cli­mate in that coun­try,” Sab­ga stat­ed.

“Our in­sur­ance com­pa­nies, TATIL and TATIL Life, re­main well cap­i­talised. Both showed im­proved per­for­mance, giv­en strong pre­mi­um in­come growth and a mod­est re­cov­ery in some in­vest­ment as­set class­es,” he stat­ed.

Sab­ga added that to­geth­er TATIL and TATIL Life achieved prof­its of $55 mil­lion for the three months end­ed June 30, 2020 ver­sus $33 mil­lion in the com­par­a­tive pe­ri­od last year.

“Our half-year 2020 re­sults are re­flec­tive of the im­pact of COVID-19 on both glob­al and re­gion­al mar­kets and as a con­se­quence your Board con­sid­ers it pru­dent to not de­clare an in­ter­im div­i­dend at this time, as we con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the ef­fects of the pan­dem­ic on all our busi­ness­es,” he stat­ed.

“In clos­ing I wish to thank our loy­al cus­tomers for their con­tin­ued sup­port and to com­mend our ded­i­cat­ed staff who demon­strate, every day, their zeal in de­liv­er­ing ex­tra­or­di­nary re­sults. This lev­el of per­for­mance is fun­da­men­tal not on­ly to our busi­ness, but to reignit­ing the economies in which we op­er­ate,” Sab­ga stat­ed.