ANSA Mer­chant Bank Lim­it­ed (AM­BL) has re­port­ed ro­bust rev­enue of TT$256 mil­lion for the first quar­ter of 2023.

This rep­re­sents an in­crease in rev­enue of 49% com­pared to the first quar­ter of 2022.

Prof­it be­fore yax (PBT) for Q1 2023 is TT$59 mil­lion.

The strong per­for­mance of AM­BL and its sub­sidiaries saw earn­ings per share in­crease in the first quar­ter of 2023 to $0.61, up ma­te­ri­al­ly from the cor­re­spond­ing quar­ter in 2022.

Chair­man of ANSA Mer­chant Bank Lim­it­ed Group A. Nor­man Sab­ga de­scribed the Q1 2023 re­sults as stel­lar.

He told share­hold­ers at the AGM that the Group has in­vest­ed over TT$800 mil­lion in a com­bi­na­tion of ac­qui­si­tions and in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy (IT) over the last two years as the or­ga­ni­za­tion is trans­form­ing the way it op­er­ates, and these changes will bring a sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment in ser­vice to its val­ued cus­tomers and cre­ate val­ue for all of its stake­hold­ers.

Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor, Gre­go­ry N. Hill pre­sent­ed the AM­BL Group fi­nan­cial per­for­mance re­sults for Q1 2023 to the com­pa­ny’s share­hold­ers at its An­nu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing (AGM) at the Radis­son Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain on May 12, 2023.

Hill said that the com­pa­ny ex­pe­ri­enced growth in all of its core busi­ness lines.

The three banks that com­prise the bank­ing sec­tor with­in the AM­BL Group of Com­pa­nies - ANSA Mer­chant Bank Lim­it­ed (Par­ent), ANSA Bank Lim­it­ed and ANSA Mer­chant Bank (Bar­ba­dos) Lim­it­ed - re­port­ed a col­lec­tive 7% growth in to­tal as­sets and a prof­it be­fore tax of TT$21.2 mil­lion for Q1 2023.

Bank­ing saw ramped-up ac­tiv­i­ty in loans, for­eign ex­change trad­ing, bond trad­ing, and pos­i­tive mark-to-mar­ket val­u­a­tions on in­vest­ments.

Hill said, “The jew­el in our crown is ANSA Bank and our sig­nif­i­cant in­vest­ment in dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy in­to ANSA Bank. Our re­cent­ly launched Dig­i­tal Touch Points in Gulf City Mall and West Mall in Trinidad bring has­sle-free bank­ing ser­vices and prod­ucts that re­move the pain points that bank­ing cus­tomers nor­mal­ly ex­pe­ri­ence in lo­cal re­tail bank­ing ser­vices. The launch of our dig­i­tal bank­ing plat­forms will mean our re­tail, and very soon com­mer­cial cus­tomers al­so, will en­joy end-to-end dig­i­tal bank­ing.”

He added that the Bank­ing Group con­tin­ues to build up­on its pi­o­neer­ing work in cre­at­ing the Caribbean Nat­ur­al Cap­i­tal Hub, which it launched in Ju­ly 2022, through its com­mit­ment to En­vi­ron­ment, So­cial and Gov­er­nance prin­ci­ples.

In ad­di­tion, the bank is con­tin­u­ing its part­ner­ship with lo­cal NGO, The Crop­per Foun­da­tion, and the glob­al In­ter­na­tion­al Cap­i­tals Coali­tion, and re­cent­ly launched the Nat­ur­al Cap­i­tal Grant Chal­lenge for small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es to en­cour­age sus­tain­able busi­ness prac­tices do­mes­ti­cal­ly, and this will soon be ex­pand­ed al­so to Bar­ba­dos.

Per­for­mance in the group’s oth­er ma­jor sec­tor, In­sur­ance, was al­so strong, with all of the in­sur­ance com­pa­nies, TATIL, TATIL Life, Tri­dent (in Bar­ba­dos) and TATIL’s newest ac­qui­si­tion, COLFIRE, re­port­ing a col­lec­tive prof­it be­fore tax of TT$40 mil­lion in Q1 2023, up from a neg­a­tive per­for­mance of TT$49 mil­lion for the cor­re­spond­ing quar­ter of 2022.

Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of TATIL, Musa Ibrahim re­port­ed that the In­sur­ance sec­tor de­liv­ered a growth of 6% year over year in its to­tal as­sets.

The strong earn­ings in this sec­tor were at­trib­uted to growth in pre­mi­ums and pos­i­tive mark-to-mar­ket val­u­a­tions on its in­vest­ment port­fo­lios.

The In­sur­ance sec­tor has al­so been mov­ing to more dig­i­tal-based ser­vices and cus­tomers can now sub­mit all health claims on­line.