Guardian Group has record­ed a prof­it af­ter tax­a­tion for the fi­nan­cial year 2022 in ex­cess of $1 bil­lion.

Ac­cord­ing to its sum­ma­ry year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2022 the com­pa­ny said de­spite con­tin­ued volatil­i­ty in the in­vest­ment mar­kets brought about by geopo­lit­i­cal events and eco­nom­ic chal­lenges, the group re­mained re­silient and con­tin­ues to fo­cus on op­ti­mis­ing per­for­mance, cap­i­tal­is­ing on emerg­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties, while at the same time man­ag­ing and mit­i­gat­ing known and emerg­ing risks.

Prof­it at­trib­ut­able to eq­ui­ty hold­ers amount­ed to $1,100 mil­lion, a 41 per cent in­crease over the $782 mil­lion record­ed in 2021.

Earn­ings per share in­creased to $4.74 com­pared to $3.37 in pri­or year.

The group’s net re­sult from in­sur­ance ac­tiv­i­ties in­creased by 45 per cent to $1,537 mil­lion, up from $1,061 mil­lion re­port­ed in 2021.

Gross writ­ten pre­mi­ums al­so in­creased to $7.297 mil­lion, four per cent more than the $7,030 mil­lion re­port­ed for fi­nan­cial year 2021.

“The ex­cel­lent per­for­mance was dri­ven by our life, health and pen­sion (LHP) seg­ment, which con­tributed an af­ter tax prof­it of $1,158 mil­lion, up 40 per cent over the pri­or year. As com­mu­ni­cat­ed pre­vi­ous­ly, this year the op­er­a­tions achieved re­turns from our trans­for­ma­tion pro­gramme as well as syn­er­gies from the align­ment of our LHP op­er­a­tions in T&T and Ja­maica,” the chair­man’s re­port by Patrick Hyl­ton stat­ed.

Hyl­ton added that dur­ing the year, these ac­tiv­i­ties re­sult­ed in long-term cost sav­ings that had the ef­fect of cre­at­ing favourable re­serve move­ments.

The com­pa­ny’s prop­er­ty and ca­su­al­ty in­clud­ing bro­ker­age (P&C) seg­ment al­so re­port­ed in­creas­es in af­ter tax prof­it of $49 mil­lion or 30 per cent over 2021, prin­ci­pal­ly from or­gan­ic growth in T&T and Ja­maica.

Op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es in­creased by three per cent year-over-year and are main­ly re­lat­ed to growth strate­gies across the group‘s busi­ness seg­ments cou­pled with its IFRS 17 im­ple­men­ta­tion ac­tiv­i­ties in prepa­ra­tion for com­pli­ance with the im­pend­ing stan­dard.

“With the dawn of 2023, IFRS 17 In­sur­ance Con­tracts be­came ef­fec­tive for an­nu­al re­port­ing pe­ri­ods be­gin­ning on or af­ter Jan­u­ary 1.

“The group has em­braced the change and is well poised to re­port in 2023 in ac­cor­dance with the re­quire­ments of the new ac­count­ing stan­dard,” Hyl­ton added.