ANSA Mer­chant Bank and its in­sur­ance com­pa­nies Tatil and Tatil Life gen­er­at­ed record rev­enue and net in­come last year, chair­man A. Nor­man Sab­ga has stat­ed.

How­ev­er, un­prece­dent­ed un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic means that share­hold­ers will not be get­ting an ad­di­tion­al div­i­dend pay­ment at this time.

“We in­creased Prof­it Be­fore Tax by 37 per cent year on year to $357 mil­lion on To­tal Op­er­at­ing In­come of $1.1 bil­lion, re­flect­ing ro­bust un­der­ly­ing per­for­mances across all our busi­ness­es,” Sab­ga stat­ed.

“To­tal Eq­ui­ty in­creased by $169 mil­lion or sev­en per cent year over year to $2.54 bil­lion, while our To­tal As­sets grew by three per cent to sur­pass $8 bil­lion 2019,” he stat­ed.

“Our Earn­ings per share in 2019 in­creased by 34 per cent to $3.24 com­pared to 2018 of $2.41,” he stat­ed.

Sab­ga said dur­ing the year a new core bank­ing plat­form was suc­cess­ful­ly in­stalled at Ansa Mer­chant Bank and a new Ac­ci­dent and Health sys­tem was in­stalled at Tatil.

“We ex­pect to see tan­gi­ble im­prove­ments in ef­fi­cien­cy and cus­tomer ser­vice in the com­ing years as a re­sult of the im­ple­men­ta­tion of these new au­to­mat­ed sys­tems,” Sab­ga stat­ed.

Last year, Ansa Mer­chant Bank en­tered in­to an agree­ment to ac­quire 100 per cent of the Bank of Bar­o­da (Trinidad and To­ba­go).

“The ac­qui­si­tion is sched­uled to be com­plet­ed and fund­ed in 2020, sub­ject to all the terms and con­di­tions of the rel­e­vant agree­ments in­clud­ing, with­out lim­i­ta­tion, mat­ters that may arise from COVID-19 and to all ap­provals be­ing re­ceived,” he stat­ed.

“In view of un­prece­dent­ed un­cer­tain­ty in glob­al fi­nan­cial mar­kets and economies due to the wide­spread im­pact of the pan­dem­ic, Ansa Mer­chant Bank has de­cid­ed it would not be pru­dent to pay a fur­ther div­i­dend at this time,” Sab­ga stat­ed.

“We are con­fi­dent that share­hold­ers will en­joy an in­creased re­turn on their rein­vest­ed cap­i­tal in the fu­ture giv­en our in­vest­ments in tech­nol­o­gy and ac­qui­si­tions, which are ex­pect­ed to en­hance our suite of prod­ucts and ser­vices re­gion­al­ly,’ he stat­ed.

The di­rec­tors ap­proved the to­tal div­i­dend at $0.20 per share for the year end­ed 31 De­cem­ber 2019 which was al­ready paid as the in­ter­im div­i­dend.