TRINIDAD'S GUARDIAN Holdings has made further inroads into the Jamaican financial sector with the acquisition last week of another local insurance firm, Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance (Jamaica).
The name of the newly-acquired company will revert to West Indies Alliance Insurance, the name which was being used up to about three years ago when Royal Insurance and Sun Alliance were merged to form Royal & Sun Alliance.
Guardian Holdings also announced that it has appointed well-known insurance executive, Peter John Thwaites, as managing director of West Indies Alliance Insurance Company.
Guardian Life entered the Jamaican market in 1999 when it acquired the individual life and pensions portfolios of three failed local insurance firms - Jamaica Mutual Life, Dyoll Life and Crown Eagle.
Contacted last week, Mr. Thwaites was unable to say how much Guardian Holdings has paid for the share capital of Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance (Jamaica), but said the company would be 100 per cent owned by the Trinidadian-based firm.
In an advertisement in the Financial Gleaner last week, Guardian Holdings, the parent company of Guardian Life of Jamaica, said it has concluded an agreement to buy all the issued share capital of Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance (Jamaica), effective October 19.
Guardian Holdings' chief executive officer, Peter Ganteaume, while naming Mr. Thwaites as the new managing director, gave the assurance that the current management and staff would remain in the employ of West Indies Alliance. The company also said Guardian Life's chairman, Arthur Lok Jack, would announce the new board of directors shortly.
Mr. Thwaites was the chief executive officer at Dyoll Life of Jamaica until he left three years ago to take up a business development executive position at Dennis Lalor's Insurance Company of the West Indies (ICWI). He left ICWI earlier this year and joined the Guardian Group as a consultant.
