The in­sur­ance mar­ket of Trinidad and To­ba­go has changed a lit­tle, af­ter T&T In­sur­ance Ltd (TATIL) moved one step clos­er to fi­nal­is­ing the ac­qui­si­tion of Colo­nial Fire In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny Ltd (Colfire) in the first week of Feb­ru­ary.

TATIL had been in the process of buy­ing Colfire from as far back as 2021.

In March of that year, CL Fi­nan­cial Ltd con­firmed that it would be sell­ing its 94.24 per cent share­hold­ing in Colfire.

The shares had been iden­ti­fied by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert as one of the as­sets that CL Fi­nan­cial could sell to re­pay its $30 bil­lion debt to tax­pay­ers.

By the end of No­vem­ber 2021, TATIL had pro­posed to buy the com­pa­ny, with Colfire ac­cept­ing the sale agree­ment.

The two com­pa­nies are among the in­dus­try lead­ers in the lo­cal in­sur­ance mar­ket.

The Busi­ness Guardian reached out to TATIL about the de­ci­sion to buy Colfire, who up to 2022 com­mand­ed 17 per cent of the Car In­sur­ance mar­ket in Trinidad.

TATIL 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 said the deal would work to the ben­e­fit of both com­pa­nies as the com­pa­ny con­tin­ued in its re­sponse, “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.”

The ac­qui­si­tion is very close to be­ing com­plet­ed as on De­cem­ber 29, 2022, TATIL launched an of­fer to pur­chase the to­tal share­hold­ing in Colfire.

TATIL’s of­fer of­fi­cial­ly closed on Feb­ru­ary 2, 2023, as the share­hold­ers of 97.5 per cent of the shares in Colfire ac­cept­ed Tatil’s of­fer.

TATIL con­firmed, “On Feb­ru­ary 7, 2023, TATIL paid for 97.5 per cent of the shares in Colfire. TATIL is tak­ing steps to ini­ti­ate the com­pul­so­ry ac­qui­si­tion process in ac­cor­dance with the Com­pa­ny Laws of T&T for the pur­pose of ac­quir­ing the re­main­ing 2.5 per cent of the shares in Colfire.”

TATIL al­so con­firmed that on Feb­ru­ary 8, 2023, a spe­cial meet­ing was held by the board of Colfire.

At that meet­ing, a new board was ap­point­ed with mem­bers se­lect­ed from boards of both TATIL and Colfire.

The board’s mem­bers are Ray A Sumairs­ingh, ex­ec­u­tive chair­man, Sean Jack, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Ashraff Ali, chief or­gan­i­sa­tion of­fi­cer, Ter­rence Bharath, di­rec­tor, Lar­ry Howai di­rec­tor, M Musa Ibrahim, di­rec­tor and Va­nee­ta Bis­soon­datt as cor­po­rate sec­re­tary.

Colo­nial Fire In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny Ltd had been in­cor­po­rat­ed in 1955 by the late Cyril Duprey.

The in­sur­ance com­pa­ny com­menced op­er­a­tions in Port-of-Spain as a small spe­cialised com­pa­ny of qual­i­fied un­der­writ­ers. Ten years on, the com­pa­ny’s name was amend­ed in 1968 to Colfire to in­clude all ser­vices in prop­er­ty, mo­tor, li­a­bil­i­ty, ma­rine and oth­er in­sur­ance lines.

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 the his­to­ry of its new ac­qui­si­tion, “Both com­pa­nies have long his­to­ries of pro­vid­ing prop­er­ty & 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.”

How­ev­er, it was con­firmed that TATIL will now be the par­ent com­pa­ny of Colfire which will re­tain its brand.

“Colfire will con­tin­ue to op­er­ate as an in­de­pen­dent in­sur­ance com­pa­ny for the medi­um term, main­tain­ing its own brand and board of di­rec­tors. The com­pa­ny is reg­u­lat­ed by the Cen­tral Bank, as TATIL is. Pol­i­cy­hold­ers of both com­pa­nies can rest as­sured that it is busi­ness as usu­al, with all the usu­al qual­i­ty ser­vices and fa­mil­iar faces to which they are ac­cus­tomed,’ said TATIL in the re­lease.

The com­pa­ny said the deal al­so meant that Colfire was now in a bet­ter po­si­tion to con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing at its ex­pect­ed stan­dard as it was now bol­stered by the fi­nan­cial strength of TATIL.

“TATIL, which has one of the strongest bal­ance sheets (cap­i­tal) in the in­dus­try—far ex­ceed­ing the min­i­mum cap­i­tal re­quired by the Cen­tral Bank—is now Colfire’s par­ent com­pa­ny. The an­tic­i­pat­ed align­ment of mu­tu­al strengths means that Colfire’s pol­i­cy­hold­ers will ben­e­fit from the fi­nan­cial se­cu­ri­ty this strong foun­da­tion pro­vides. Two sig­nif­i­cant com­peti­tors in the mar­ket will now have shared goals, re­sult­ing in bet­ter use of re­sources,” said the com­pa­ny in an emailed re­sponse to the Busi­ness Guardian.

“TATIL is rat­ed A- (Ex­cel­lent) by the in­ter­na­tion­al rat­ings agency, AM Best. This rat­ing is a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in cre­at­ing trust in the sta­bil­i­ty of its op­er­a­tions and is par­tic­u­lar­ly val­ued by cor­po­rate clients. The sys­tems and pro­ce­dures to achieve the rat­ing are rig­or­ous and are em­bed­ded in the op­er­a­tions of Colfire’s new par­ent com­pa­ny.”

TATIL said the deal would im­prove the in­sur­ance in­dus­try in T&T.

The com­pa­ny said, “This is a bold move which ben­e­fits not on­ly both com­pa­nies and their cus­tomers, but the lo­cal in­sur­ance sec­tor as a whole. The in­sur­ance in­dus­try world­wide has been mov­ing to­wards con­sol­i­da­tion, as com­pa­nies cap­i­talise on their mu­tu­al strengths to of­fer cus­tomers more var­ied prod­ucts and en­hanced ser­vice. Growth of this kind may al­so pro­vide more eco­nom­i­cal op­tions for cus­tomers.”

TATIL added the deal would im­prove the strengths of both com­pa­nies.

TATIL said, “We ex­pect that we will be the most sig­nif­i­cant prop­er­ty and ca­su­al­ty in­sur­er in the mar­ket. On the cut­ting edge of tech­nol­o­gy, which will sup­port ease of do­ing busi­ness for our pol­i­cy­hold­ers. Of­fer­ing a wide range of prod­ucts – in­clud­ing new op­tions – to cus­tomers. Fo­cused on val­ue cre­ation for cus­tomers as their pre­ferred in­sur­er for mo­tor and prop­er­ty, life, health, pen­sions, and as a provider of mort­gages and more. Liv­ing up to and demon­strat­ing our sus­tain­abil­i­ty agen­da, by pro­mot­ing bet­ter lifestyles for our cus­tomers and the wider com­mu­ni­ty, and mod­ern en­er­gy us­age in our prop­er­ties.”