Q: The pre­vi­ous Min­is­ter of Fi­nance in the 2025 bud­get said that the gov­ern­ment in­tends to sell its 49 per cent stake in Cli­co. Is that an as­set that the Guardian Group would be in­ter­est­ed in ac­quir­ing?.

A: Of course, we’d look at it. I as­sume an as­set like that would be put out for a mar­ket ten­der. So I would say, we would def­i­nite­ly look at it. And to the ex­tent that there is a good book of busi­ness there, and there is a re­al op­por­tu­ni­ty there to agree to a trans­ac­tion that makes sense, I would have no hes­i­ta­tion to put in an of­fer. If that as­set meets the due dili­gence re­quire­ments and the in­ter­nal hur­dle char­ac­ter­is­tics that the board would set, I would not re­ject it. I would cer­tain­ly look at it.

One of the Guardian group’s main com­peti­tors is the Sagi­cor Fi­nan­cial Com­pa­ny. A lit­tle more than five years ago, in De­cem­ber 2019, Sagi­cor did a trans­ac­tion which re­sult­ed in its pri­ma­ry list­ing be­ing on the Toron­to Stock Ex­change. What do you think of that trans­ac­tion and is that a pos­si­bil­i­ty or prospect for the Guardian Group go­ing for­ward?

Very good ques­tion, An­tho­ny. As you know, in my pri­or life, I was a banker. So I know Sagi­cor very well. I think that was a very good move for them. In­sur­ance is a glob­al busi­ness, so go­ing on to a more in­ter­na­tion­al or glob­al ex­change has a cer­tain val­ue, be­cause you can be part of an in­vestor group­ing that is much broad­er than in the small­er re­gions like the Caribbean or emerg­ing mar­ket spaces.

So I think strate­gi­cal­ly, I have no crit­i­cism of the move. It al­so al­lowed them to look at oth­er ac­qui­si­tions which they’ve done, like ivari in Cana­da. Their fo­cus has been on grow­ing in North Amer­i­ca. I would say noth­ing is off the ta­ble for Guardian Group. As we con­tin­ue to grow and get to a cer­tain crit­i­cal mass, there may be an op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to cross list, or to list on­to a ma­jor ex­change. It’s some­thing that I have al­ways con­sid­ered as a pos­si­bil­i­ty. It’s not in our im­me­di­ate fu­ture, but I would not rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of look­ing at a ma­jor stock ex­change like Toron­to or the Lon­don Stock Ex­change, etcetera. Cer­tain­ly when we are grow­ing in­to Eu­rope, in these places this be­comes a con­ver­sa­tion that we will even­tu­al­ly have to have.

It’s a con­ver­sa­tion you will even­tu­al­ly have to have. Is that con­ver­sa­tion on the ta­ble at this point?

Not at this point. But as I said, for ex­am­ple, if we see a ma­jor growth op­por­tu­ni­ty in the Eu­ro­pean space, we would have to look at it, be­cause we would need to raise the cap­i­tal for that. So stay tuned. Stay tuned. If we do get that op­por­tu­ni­ty that be­comes on the ta­ble. But as of right now, we are grow­ing or­gan­i­cal­ly in­to the Nether­lands.

Do you think Guardian Hold­ings Ltd, the Guardian Group, has ben­e­fit­ted from Ja­maica’s NCB Fi­nan­cial Group (NCBFG) com­plet­ing the ac­qui­si­tion of a ma­jor­i­ty in­ter­est in Guardian group in May 2019

I would look at it in two ways. From a share­hold­ing per­spec­tive, it does mean that there are few­er shares in the mar­ket avail­able to be trad­ed. And liq­uid­i­ty is one of the things that in­vestors look for when they buy a stock. I want to come in, but I al­so want to know, if I need to get out that I can get out eas­i­ly. So hav­ing few­er shares avail­able for trad­ing has lim­it­ed our liq­uid­i­ty in terms of the trad­ing as­pect of the stock.

But be­ing part of a large fi­nan­cial group, es­pe­cial­ly for our busi­ness­es in Ja­maica, of­fers us the op­por­tu­ni­ty to look to pack­age prod­ucts. For ex­am­ple, an in­sur­ance com­pa­ny is lim­it­ed, we can’t do bank­ing prod­ucts. But when we go to see clients now, there’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty to present a full ser­vice of­fer­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly for our Ja­maica op­er­a­tions.

In terms of the in­ter­est in the group you now have a greater in­ter­est in the wider Caribbean, be­cause you’re part of a well known com­pa­ny in Ja­maica.

But over­all, our Guardian Hold­ings Group has had in­sur­ance busi­ness­es. They’re a bank­ing busi­ness. So we have been able to, on a stand­alone ba­sis, pur­sue our in­sur­ance op­er­a­tions with­out any re­al dis­trac­tion from their bank­ing busi­ness. We are not com­pet­ing with them in any way. And our op­er­a­tion has been more re­gion­al, in the Dutch Caribbean, in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean, in the Nether­lands, and in Ja­maica. They have been pri­mar­i­ly in Ja­maica, in Cay­man, in Bermu­da, etcetera. So it’s been a com­pli­men­ta­ry foot­print is what I would say.

It is fair­ly well known that the chair­man of NCBFG Michael Lee Chin, for what­ev­er rea­son, has been sell­ing shares in that com­pa­ny for maybe the last year and a half. Be­cause NCBFG holds a ma­jor­i­ty stake in Guardian group is there fear or trep­i­da­tion among some Guardian Hold­ing share­hold­ers that ei­ther NCBFG may be forced to sell all of its stake in Guardian Hold­ings, or that it may sell down its shares in Guardian Hold­ings in or­der to cre­ate liq­uid­i­ty for the par­ent com­pa­ny.

I don’t know what his strat­e­gy is in his hold­ings NCBFG, but as far as Guardian Hold­ings is con­cerned, we are a strong com­pa­ny. We be­lieve that we have a val­ue propo­si­tion on a stand­alone ba­sis, as well as part of a fi­nan­cial ser­vices group. So I haven’t got any word from Guardian share­hold­ers that they are con­cerned about NCBFG’s hold­ings or re­duc­ing their hold­ings.

What I would say is they are al­ways in­ter­est­ed in how we are per­form­ing, what our div­i­dends are. And of course, I guess the main con­cern is, how do we get our share price to bet­ter re­flect our val­ue? As I said, our book val­ue is much high­er than our mar­ket val­ue. So in terms of whether NCBFG holds its po­si­tion or re­duces it in Guardian Hold­ings, I think, the im­por­tant thing from our share­hold­ers point of view is how is Guardian per­form­ing, and how is Guardian able to have $5.4 bil­lion in cap­i­tal. That’s up from $2.9 bil­lion in cap­i­tal in 2022. We’ve strength­ened our eq­ui­ty po­si­tion.

Our prof­it, as you could see, on a con­tin­u­ing ba­sis has im­proved as well. Last year, we did not have any one-offs and we did $850 mil­lion in prof­it, up from $700 mil­lion in 2023 and $472 mil­lion in 2022. So I think from a Guardian per­for­mance ba­sis, the share­hold­ers re­al­ly don’t have any fear in terms of what NCBFG, or the ul­ti­mate chair­man of NCBFG, is do­ing in terms of man­ag­ing the busi­ness. I think he has a strong busi­ness in NCBFG, and that re­flects well on that bank.

But as a share­hold­er in Guardian, they are a strong part­ner as a fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion. We don’t have any con­cerns be­ing ex­pressed by share­hold­ers about Mr Lee-Chin buy­ing or sell­ing shares in NCBFG.

Just as a mat­ter of clar­i­fi­ca­tion, does NCBFG re­ceive its div­i­dends in US dol­lars, and does that come from GHL’s Ja­maica op­er­a­tions or from Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Re­mem­ber, Guardian Hold­ings is owned by NCB Glob­al Hold­ings, which is based in T&T. So we pay our div­i­dends to a Trinidad en­ti­ty, and then they man­age their dis­tri­b­u­tion. And of course, our oth­er share­hold­ers are in Trinidad and Ja­maica and so on. So our Trea­sury will man­age how it set­tles with the var­i­ous cen­tral de­pos­i­to­ries. So I don’t have fig­ures off hand as to whether in Ja­maican dol­lars, TT dol­lars, US dol­lars, but we do pay our share­hold­ers in the ju­ris­dic­tions in which they hold the shares.

So, if NCB Glob­al Hold­ings owns Guardian Group shares in Trinidad, are they paid in TT dol­lars, or in US dol­lars or Ja­maican dol­lars. What cur­ren­cy are they paid in?

I would have to check ex­act­ly how op­er­a­tional­ly they are paid. I would say that I know in Ja­maica, we pay in Ja­maican dol­lars. In Trinidad, we tend to pay in TT dol­lars. But it’s al­so based on our liq­uid­i­ty. And I mean, we are a multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny. So as you can see, rough­ly 24 per cent of our prof­its are in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and then the rest is spread all over 23 coun­tries. So it’s based on where our liq­uid­i­ty is and what are the re­quire­ments of the stock ex­change that we’re on. I’m sure some of it is paid in both TT dol­lars and US dol­lars, and some of it is paid in Ja­maican dol­lars, be­cause we’re list­ed on those two ex­changes. But I can’t give you the ex­act fig­ures right now. I can check and re­vert to you.