Guardian Hold­ings Ltd (GHL), the T&T-head­quar­tered, re­gion­al in­sur­ance com­pa­ny, yes­ter­day re­port­ed un-au­dit­ed prof­it at­trib­ut­able to its share­hold­ers of $713 mil­lion, for the fi­nan­cial year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2023, an in­crease of 54 per cent over the pri­or year’s re­sults of $464 mil­lion.

The com­pa­ny re­port­ed net in­come from its in­vest­ing ac­tiv­i­ties of $1.92 bil­lion in its 2023 fi­nan­cial year, which was more than twice the $823.7 mil­lion it gen­er­at­ed from its in­vest­ing ac­tiv­i­ties in 2022.

In its unau­dit­ed re­sults, GHL record­ed $740.3 mil­lion in what it de­scribed as in­sur­ance ser­vice re­sult for 2023, which was an im­prove­ment of 4.8 per cent over 2022’s $706.3 mil­lion.

In com­ments on GHL’s fi­nan­cials, its chair­man, Robert Almei­da said its Life, Health and Pen­sion (LHP) seg­ment con­tributed in­sur­ance rev­enues of $2.704 bil­lion, up from $2.413 bil­lion in the pri­or year by $291 mil­lion or 12 per cent.

In­sur­ance rev­enue in­creased on all lines as clients con­tin­ued to ser­vice their poli­cies cou­pled with new busi­ness growth across all ter­ri­to­ries. This year-over-year in­crease in rev­enue was par­tial­ly off­set by in­creased in­sur­ance ser­vice ex­pens­es main­ly due to health claims and di­rect­ly at­trib­ut­able ex­pens­es, the com­pa­ny said.

The Prop­er­ty and Ca­su­al­ty (P&C) seg­ment al­so re­port­ed in­creas­es in in­sur­ance rev­enues of $2.74 bil­lion up from $2.45 bil­lion in the pri­or year by $285 mil­lion or 12 per cent, prin­ci­pal­ly from op­er­a­tions in the Trinidad, Ja­maica and Dutch Caribbean mar­kets.

All busi­ness lines ex­pe­ri­enced growth ex­cept Ma­rine. In­sur­ance ser­vice ex­pens­es were $1.2 mil­lion, 6 per cent low­er than the pri­or year main­ly from favourable claims ex­pe­ri­ence for prop­er­ty. Rein­sur­ance mar­kets con­tin­ue to tight­en thus re­sult­ing in in­creased rein­sur­ance ex­pens­es pri­mar­i­ly on the prop­er­ty book of busi­ness. Rev­enue from the bro­ker­age seg­ment was $228 mil­lion, up 3 per cent from the pri­or year.

Almei­da said its net in­come from in­vest­ing ac­tiv­i­ties al­so in­creased by $1.1 bil­lion over the pri­or year to $1.9 bil­lion.

“This in­crease was main­ly due to a year-over-year in­crease in net fair val­ue gains of $897 mil­lion, which in­clud­ed an un­re­alised net fair val­ue gain of $157 mil­lion from the re­clas­si­fi­ca­tion of fi­nan­cial as­sets back­ing life and an­nu­ity port­fo­lios be­ing trans­ferred from amor­tised costs and fair val­ue through oth­er com­pre­hen­sive in­come to fair val­ue through the prof­it and loss,” said Almei­da.

He added that the change aimed at di­ver­si­fy­ing fi­nan­cial as­sets and re­duc­ing the mis­match gap of as­sets and li­a­bil­i­ties on in­sur­ance port­fo­lios.

“The re­main­ing year-over-year move­ment of $744 mil­lion in­cludes net fair val­ue gains achieved from all main class­es of in­vest­ments, with lo­cal eq­ui­ties be­ing a sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tor. For­eign ex­change gains in the cur­rent year ver­sus pri­or year loss­es al­so con­tributed to the favourable re­sults.

“Your group con­tin­ues to close­ly mon­i­tor volatile mar­kets and re­bal­ance port­fo­lios, as nec­es­sary,” said Almei­da.

The GHL chair­man al­so not­ed that for the year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2023, earn­ings per share in­creased to $3.07 ver­sus $2.00 in the com­par­a­tive pe­ri­od.

“Eq­ui­ty val­ue per share was $16.50 ver­sus its com­par­a­tive of $12.48,” Almei­da said.

He not­ed that the group’s strong cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion and di­ver­si­fied busi­ness mod­el po­si­tioned it well to re­spond to the chang­ing busi­ness land­scape and to nav­i­gate the on­go­ing un­cer­tain­ties in its in­vest­ment mar­kets and the macro en­vi­ron­ment.