Sagi­cor Fi­nan­cial Com­pa­ny (SFC) yes­ter­day an­nounced that it was in­creas­ing its quar­ter­ly div­i­dend by 12.5 per cent from US$0.06 a share to US$.0.0675 (US$0.27 an­nu­alised div­i­dend).

The quar­ter­ly div­i­dend will be paid on April 17, 2025 , to share­hold­ers of record at the close of busi­ness on March 27, 2025, said the com­pa­ny, which is head­quar­tered in Bar­ba­dos, but list­ed on the Toron­to Stock Ex­change.

In an­nounc­ing the fi­nan­cial re­sults for its De­cem­ber 31, 2024 year end, Sagi­cor pres­i­dent and CEO, An­dre Mousseau, de­scribed the com­pa­ny's fourth quar­ter per­for­mance as "sol­id."

"In our first full year of earn­ings in­clud­ing our Cana­di­an seg­ment, we record­ed core earn­ings to share­hold­ers con­sis­tent with our guid­ance and re­port­ed net in­come to share­hold­ers in ex­cess of core earn­ings to share­hold­ers," Mousseau said.

SFC re­port­ed net in­come to share­old­er of US$97.5 mil­lion and core earn­ings to share­hold­ers of US$90.9 mil­lion.

Mousseau said the in­sur­ance group con­tin­ues to make mean­ing­ful progress on its strate­gic ini­tia­tives, in­clud­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween its op­er­at­ing seg­ments, re­fresh­ing its tech­nol­o­gy, and im­prov­ing its ac­cess to and cost of cap­i­tal, all with the aim to re­duce costs, dri­ve growth, and ul­ti­mate­ly ex­pand our re­turn on share­hold­ers' eq­ui­ty.

"We are al­so pleased to con­tin­ue to ex­pand our re­turn of cap­i­tal to share­hold­ers. We re­pur­chased 3 mil­lion shares in 2024 at a sig­nif­i­cant dis­count to book val­ue, con­tribut­ing to a 4 per cent net re­duc­tion in share count for the year. This helped dri­ve our book val­ue per share high­er than the rate of our re­tained earn­ings.

"Our in­creased pro­ject­ed core earn­ings, ro­bust cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion and liq­uid­i­ty, and re­duced share count are all en­abling us to pro­vide our share­hold­ers with a 12.5 per cent in­crease in our quar­ter­ly div­i­dend. At this pay­ment lev­el we an­tic­i­pate we will be at ap­prox­i­mate­ly the mid­point of our 30 per cent to 40 per cent tar­get core div­i­dend pay­out ra­tio range for 2025," said the SFC pres­i­dent.

He said the com­pa­ny is al­so is­su­ing new guid­ance for 2025.

"While eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty may cloud cer­tain macro­eco­nom­ic vari­ables, we be­lieve our core ini­tia­tives will en­able us to con­tin­ue to grow our re­turn on share­hold­ers' eq­ui­ty (1) in 2025 and be­yond."

Sagi­cor's core re­sults for 2024 im­proved sig­nif­i­cant­ly over 2023, with 2024 be­ing the first full cal­en­dar year con­sol­i­dat­ing ivari as our Sagi­cor Cana­da seg­ment. Core earn­ings (1) to share­hold­ers of US$90.9 mil­lion ex­ceed­ed man­age­ment's re­vised guid­ance from Q2 2024 of US$80 mil­lion to US$90 mil­lion , and new busi­ness CSM of US$166.3 mil­lion was with­in the pro­vid­ed range of US$160 mil­lion to US$180 mil­lion.

Sagi­cor Life, which in­cludes the com­pa­ny's op­er­a­tions in T&T, re­port­ed net in­come to share­hold­ers of US$38.5 mil­lion for 2024.

Sagi­cor Cana­da record­ed net in­come to share­hold­ers of US$96.2 mil­lion for the year, while the net in­come to share­hold­ers of Sagi­cor Life USA was US$51.6 mil­lion for the year.

Sagi­cor's share of Sagi­cor Ja­maica's net in­come to share­hold­ers was US$31.3 mil­lion for the year. Sagi­cor Fi­nan­cial owns 49.1 per cent of Sagi­cor Ja­maica, but fi­nan­cials are con­sol­i­dat­ed by SFC.

Sagi­cor delist­ed from the T&T, Bar­ba­dos and Lon­don stock ex­changes in the fourth quar­ter of 2019. The com­pa­ny's list­ing is now on the Toron­to Stock Ex­change.