An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

In­creas­ing Guardian Life of The Caribbean’s share of the re­gion­al mar­kets in which it op­er­ates is one of the pri­or­i­ties for the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny.

This was re­vealed by the pres­i­dent of Guardian Life of The Caribbean Saman­ta Saugh, who was ap­point­ed in June, dur­ing a one-on-one in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian on Tues­day.  

Saugh said the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny is look­ing to ex­pand its op­er­a­tions in Bar­ba­dos, the East­ern Caribbean, and the North­ern Caribbean.

She ex­plained the fi­nan­cial ser­vices com­pa­ny has es­tab­lished op­er­a­tions in the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of East­ern Caribbean States (OECS). Those op­er­a­tions, are in their in­fan­cy stages of grow­ing the brand.  

“We do have reg­is­tra­tion un­der Guardian Life of The Caribbean as well. In the North­ern Caribbean, our pres­ence is through part­ner­ships with bro­kers in those spaces. Ex­pan­sion is some­thing that we’ve had on the radar for a while and it’s on train. We con­tin­ue to look for op­por­tu­ni­ties to grow or­gan­i­cal­ly,” she said.

Guardian Life is a sub­sidiary of Guardian Hold­ings Ltd (GHL), a di­ver­si­fied fi­nan­cial ser­vices group, which pro­vides life in­sur­ance, health in­sur­ance, pen­sions, and as­set man­age­ment. Guardian Life is one of the largest life in­sur­ance providers in the re­gion, with a mar­ket pres­ence in T&T, Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, and oth­er re­gion­al mar­kets.

Asked whether the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cials are in good stead, she quick­ly said yes and it is ex­pect­ed to sur­pass its last fi­nan­cial year, which end­ed on De­cem­ber 31, 2023.

GHL re­port­ed net in­come from its in­vest­ing ac­tiv­i­ties of $1.92 bil­lion in its 2023 fi­nan­cial year, which was more than twice the $823.7 mil­lion it gen­er­at­ed from its in­vest­ing ac­tiv­i­ties in 2022.

Saugh, who is the first fe­male pres­i­dent of Guardian Life of The Caribbean, joined the Guardian Group in 2018 as vice pres­i­dent of fi­nance. In May 2022, Saugh was ap­point­ed in­ter­im group chief fi­nan­cial of­fi­cer be­fore be­ing ap­point­ed per­ma­nent­ly in the role in Ju­ly 2022.

Giv­ing an up­date on what cat­e­gories of in­sur­ance are see­ing an uptick, the pres­i­dent said group life and health grew by 10 per cent in 2023 over 2022.

“But that is a re­flec­tion of the brand­ing and aware­ness. Just putting in­for­ma­tion out there to pro­tect your­self. Pen­sion in­sur­ance con­tin­ues to do well. Typ­i­cal­ly, it runs on a cy­cle. So our fis­cal year is Jan­u­ary to De­cem­ber. You get most of your upticks there in the fourth quar­ter. We are al­ready in the fourth quar­ter. And we are see­ing that trend as ex­pect­ed.”

Re­struc­tur­ing of the or­gan­i­sa­tion

Ques­tioned about the re­struc­tur­ing of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, Saugh said the Guardian Group em­barked on a strate­gic trans­for­ma­tion as part of the group’s five-year strate­gic plan.  

The ob­jec­tive, she not­ed, is to align the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s as­pi­ra­tions with a clear fo­cus on pro­tect­ing its core busi­ness and stay­ing at the fore­front of fi­nan­cial ser­vices.  

Saugh in­di­cat­ed that this trans­for­ma­tion has led to sev­er­al or­gan­i­sa­tion­al changes aimed at be­com­ing fit for pur­pose, stream­lin­ing op­er­a­tions, and en­hanc­ing over­all ef­fi­cien­cy.

 Part of the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny’s trans­for­ma­tion plan in­cludes a key fo­cus on ar­eas such as:

* Mod­ernising its tech­no­log­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture;

* Im­ple­ment­ing best-in-class process­es;

* Re­in­forc­ing key or­gan­i­sa­tion­al func­tions; and

* Ex­e­cut­ing its cap­i­tal strat­e­gy

 “As our busi­ness evolves, it is nat­ur­al for changes to oc­cur. This evo­lu­tion has led to the emer­gence of new func­tion­al ar­eas and the re­align­ment of our frame­work. These shifts are de­signed to cre­ate growth op­por­tu­ni­ties with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion, al­low­ing us to strength­en our core while open­ing new path­ways for pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment and in­no­va­tion,” she ex­plained.

Asked whether she re­placed Ja­maican in­sur­ance ex­ec­u­tive Er­ic Hosin as pres­i­dent of GLOC, Saugh said, “Hosin is the Life, Health In­sur­ance and Pen­sion pres­i­dent. With­in our group struc­ture, we have an Life, Health In­sur­ance and Pen­sion sub­group. With­in that sub­group, you have Guardian Life Ltd, which is our com­pa­ny in Ja­maica. And you have a Guardian Life of the Caribbean, which is us here in Trinidad. So the two pres­i­dents, which is my coun­ter­part, Megan Miller-Brown and I, both re­port to Hosin. So Hosin is the Pres­i­dent of LH­NP.  So it’s not a re­place­ment,” she dis­closed.

Fol­low­ing the sud­den res­ig­na­tion of David Maraj as CFO on May 5, 22, Saugh be­came the act­ing CFO.

Maraj had tak­en is­sue with GHL’s treat­ment of de­ferred tax­a­tion, ar­gu­ing that the Q1 ac­counts were “ma­te­ri­al­ly mis­stat­ed which shall have a ma­te­r­i­al im­pact on the GHL Group ac­counts.

It was said that then Pres­i­dent of Guardian Life Anand Pas­cal and Saugh signed those ac­counts. Re­spond­ing to the claim, Saugh said, “Those ac­counts have been au­dit­ed by our au­di­tors and cleared. There was noth­ing that was not dis­closed to the au­di­tors that was not prop­er­ly done  by in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial re­port­ing stan­dards.  So, sign­ing of those ac­counts were very much com­pli­ant with ac­count­ing stan­dards and au­dit­ing pro­ce­dures.”

 Pressed fur­ther on whether her pro­mo­tion in the com­pa­ny was as a re­sult of her sign­ing those ac­counts, Saugh con­tin­ued “I’m not sure I un­der­stand the link­age of that state­ment be­cause, as men­tioned,  those ac­counts com­ply with ac­count­ing stan­dards.”  

She is pas­sion­ate about bring­ing peo­ple up and pro­mot­ing per­son­al growth and de­vel­op­ment. “There’s noth­ing I’ve achieved that I can say is 100 per cent due to my ac­tions alone. Many of my suc­cess­es are be­cause I was part of an amaz­ing team. You can’t do it alone.”