BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – ST. KITTS-NEVIS-ANGUILLA Trading and Development Company (TDC) has announced that as of the end of April the company would be the official agents for Sagicor Life Insurance.
This venture was made possible following a decision by the insurance company to operate through an agent rather than actually operating the business on-land.
The decision was made early March this year and, although many of the details have not yet been finalised, the insurance subsidiary of TDC, St. Kitts-Nevis Insurance Company (SNIC) would be taking control of Sagicor’s local administration, keeping the sales and marketing aspects under the original company’s name.
Speaking exclusively with SKNVibes, Executive Director TDC Nick Menon explained that Sagicor Life Insurance would be offered as one of the services under the umbrella of SNIC, which is expected to enhance and extend the range of insurance products and services offered.
“We try to align companies with similar goals and ambitions as ourselves with TDC to make sure that we have a full range of quality products and services to offer people. Our insurance, SNIC, has a very good history of offering general insurance services to the market place in St. Kitts-Nevis. But we were not able to offer it as a portfolio product to our customers in St. Kitts-Nevis. So, we wanted to ensure that our customers receive access to the best services through us in whatever way we could offer them.”
SNIC was established in July 1987 after serving as an agency for Insurance Group of North America (INA) and Capital Life for a number of years. The indigenous company was primarily designed to offer general insurance including house insurance, both external and contents insurance, motor insurance and liability insurance. The company has never offered life and or health insurance as part of its overall package.
“Coming together with a company like Sagicor who has a strong history of life insurance throughout the region, would give clients some sense of security when taking their products from them. Sagicor is a very well-backed life insurance company with a wide range of life and health policies which we didn’t have on the table at TDC. Now, to marry those two together, the opportunities that we have with our existing clients and the networks we have in the market place in St. Kitts-Nevis, together with a new set of very strong services, is an opportunity that we could not pass up.”
Menon indicated that while the global economic downturn continues to have negative spinoffs on businesses in regional economies, TDC took the necessary pre-emptive measures to ensure that Sagicor Life Insurance is audited and well-regulated with satisfactory oversight.
“We’ve had some vulnerability in the insurance industry recently in the region with the problems of CL Financial affecting CLICO and British American. We were very cautious in forming our partnerships and we took a lot of those issues into consideration. We are very pleased to be in partnership with Sagicor as it is a listed company which receives standard regulation.
Sagicor Life Insurance Company was established in 1840 as The Mutual and operates in 21 countries in the Caribbean, Latin America, the UK and the US. Today, the company owns approximately US$3649.7M in assets and is listed on the Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaican and the London Stock Exchanges.
SNIC will continue to offer its general insurance services with Sagicor Life Insurance under its business umbrella.
