ANSA Mer­chant Bank Ltd yes­ter­day re­port­ed af­ter-tax prof­its of $162.24 mil­lion for the fi­nan­cial year end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2024, a 25.5 per cent in­crease com­pared to the $129.29 mil­lion the com­pa­ny earned in 2023.

ANSA Mer­chant Bank is a pub­licly list­ed fi­nan­cial com­pa­ny that pro­vides bank­ing and in­sur­ance so­lu­tions, com­pris­ing ANSA Mer­chant, ANSA Bank, Tatil, Tatil Life, Colfire in T&T and Tri­dent in Bar­ba­dos.

In his state­ment on the group's re­sults, ANSA Mer­chant chair­man, Nor­man Sab­ga, said the com­pa­ny's life and gen­er­al in­sur­ance op­er­a­tions in­creased by more than 100 per cent, af­ter elim­i­nat­ing in­tra-group div­i­dends.

He said the in­sur­ance seg­ment con­tin­ues to be well cap­i­talised, boast­ing one of the strongest bal­ance sheets in the re­gion­al in­sur­ance in­dus­try...The in­te­gra­tion of Tatil and Colfire is pro­gress­ing smooth­ly, with the ac­qui­si­tion al­ready mak­ing a pos­i­tive im­pact on the group's fi­nan­cial per­for­mance," said Sab­ga.

He not­ed that ANSA Mer­chant's bank­ing seg­ment had an over­all de­cline in its af­ter-tax prof­itabil­i­ty of about 25 per cent.

"Op­er­at­ing in an in­creas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive land­scape, our bank­ing seg­ment con­tin­ues to evolve and ex­pand...ANSA Bank made sig­nif­i­cant ad­vances in 2024 with the of­fi­cial launch of its cut­ting-edge dig­i­tal bank­ing plat­form. Our ANSA mu­tu­al funds al­so re­mained strong com­peti­tors in their re­spec­tive cat­e­gories and we an­tic­i­pate their con­tin­ued suc­cess in the mar­ket," Sab­ga said.

In a note con­cern­ing events af­ter the re­port­ing pe­ri­od, the com­pa­ny re­port­ed that the Cen­tral Bank wrote to ANSA McAL on March 7, in its ca­pac­i­ty as con­trol­ling share­hold­er of ANSA Mer­chant and its sub­sidiaries.

"The Cen­tral Bank di­rect­ed the com­ple­tion of a le­gal en­ti­ty re­struc­ture of the ANSA Mer­chant Bank Ltd Fi­nan­cial Group, pur­suant to sec­tion 67 (1) of the Fi­nan­cial In­sti­tu­tions Act, 2008.

"The re­struc­ture will ul­ti­mate­ly re­sult in the cre­ation of a fi­nan­cial hold­ing com­pa­ny for the ANSA Mer­chant Bank Fi­nan­cial Group. Work has com­menced to en­sure com­pli­ance with this di­rec­tive," ac­cord­ing to the note.