The Trinidad and To­ba­go In­sur­ance Ltd (TATIL) has com­plet­ed its ac­qui­si­tion of Colfire, which was one of the in­sur­ance com­pa­nies in the CL Fi­nan­cial (CLF) group.

The ac­qui­si­tion was done on April 6, 2023 and the val­ue of the trans­ac­tion is es­ti­mat­ed at $320 mil­lion.

Since 2021, TATIL had been in the process of buy­ing Colfire.

No­tice of the com­ple­tion was post­ed on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change last week.

“The com­pul­so­ry ac­qui­si­tion process ini­ti­at­ed on March 10, 2023 by T&T In­sur­ance Ltd (TATIL), a whol­ly-owned sub­sidiary of ANSA Mer­chant Bank Ltd (AM­BL), whose ul­ti­mate par­ent is ANSA McAL Ltd (ANSA McAL) (ANSA McAL own­ing 82.5 per cent of AM­BL’s shares), pur­suant to the pro­vi­sions of Sec­tion 202 of the Com­pa­nies Act, Chap. 81:01 of the laws of T&T, to ac­quire the re­main­ing 2.5 per cent of Colo­nial Fire and Gen­er­al In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (Colfire), rep­re­sent­ing the share­hold­ing of the share­hold­ers of Colfire who did not ac­cept TATIL’s of­fer and take-over bid to ac­quire all the is­sued and out­stand­ing or­di­nary shares of Colfire is­sued on De­cem­ber 29, 2022, was com­plet­ed on 6th April, 2023,” said the no­tice.

TATIL is a sub­sidiary of pub­licly list­ed ANSA Mer­chant Bank, which is a sub­sidiary of the ANSA McAL group, which is al­so pub­licly list­ed on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change.

The Colo­nial Fire In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny Ltd was in­cor­po­rat­ed in 1955 by the late Cyril Duprey.

It op­er­at­ed in Port-of-Spain as a small spe­cialised com­pa­ny of qual­i­fied un­der­writ­ers un­til 1968 when the com­pa­ny’s name was changed to Colfire to in­clude all ser­vices in prop­er­ty, mo­tor, li­a­bil­i­ty, ma­rine and oth­er in­sur­ance lines.

In a re­cent in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, TATIL had said, “The ac­qui­si­tion of Colfire by TATIL fits in with its long-term plan to grow our mar­ket share. The re­sources of TATIL and the ANSA McAL fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor would en­able Colfire to bet­ter sup­port the evolv­ing needs of pol­i­cy­hold­ers, and to re­main a strong play­er in this com­pet­i­tive land­scape.”

TATIL al­so not­ed the deal would work to the ben­e­fit of both com­pa­nies.

“Ul­ti­mate­ly, the ac­qui­si­tion will have a pos­i­tive im­pact on the re­silience of both com­pa­nies and will ce­ment TATIL’s po­si­tion as a lead­ing in­sur­ance com­pa­ny in the lo­cal in­dus­try,” it said.

Ac­cord­ing to the As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T In­sur­ance Com­pa­nies (AT­TIC) in 2018 Colfire was ranked third in the lo­cal gen­er­al in­sur­ance mar­ket record­ing $282 mil­lion in gross writ­ten pre­mi­ums.

When asked about what the deal would mean for both com­pa­nies, TATIL hailed its new ac­qui­si­tion. “Both com­pa­nies have long his­to­ries of pro­vid­ing prop­er­ty and ca­su­al­ty (Gen­er­al In­sur­ance) pro­tec­tion for Trin­bag­o­ni­ans. Colfire be­gan op­er­a­tions in 1958 and, five short years lat­er, in 1963, TATIL opened its doors. Their com­bined lega­cy of track record and ex­pe­ri­ence is su­pe­ri­or to any oth­er in the mar­ket.”