The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

Regulators yesterday said they expect a “very orderly wind-down” of a Bahamas-based health insurer as it readies to exit the market by December 2021.

Michele Fields, the Insurance Commission’s superintendent, confirmed to Tribune Business that Generali Worldwide had given formal notice of its intention to cease doing business in The Bahamas and leave the jurisdiction.

“Generali Worldwide have given us advice that they plan to leave the jurisdiction,” she said. “I think it will be over a course of a year, so they will not renew policies after a certain date.

“Their policies are generally one-year policies, and so as policies expire they won’t renew them. This will be a very orderly exit from the market.” Generali executives declined to comment when contacted by this newspaper yesterday, but insurance industry sources confirmed it had notified both clients and the industry of its plans.

Generali entered the Bahamian health insurance market in 2007 when it acquired the client portfolio previously owned by the former British American Insurance Company. That followed a management-led buyout of the latter that was spearheaded by now-opposition deputy leader, Chester Cooper.

The underwriter, which focuses on group or employer-sponsored plans, has struggled to make major inroads into the market it competing against long-entrenched competitors such as Atlantic Medical, Colina Insurance Company and Family Guardian.

“They have notified their clients,” one insurance sector contact, speaking on condition of anonymity, said. “When they came into the market they bought British American’s portfolio, which was low, low level.

“That portfolio had been losing money left, right and centre, and as soon as their [BAF Financial’s] non-compete clause was over they re-entered the health market with a more suitably-priced health product.”

The source suggested that Generali had managed to clean-up the portfolio it inherited, and had sought to attract clients by offering deep premium discounts, but there appeared to be little interest from Bahamas-based rivals in acquiring it ahead of the company’s planned December 2021 departure.

They added that remaining health insurers seemed to be waiting for Generali clients to come to them, adding that the company seemed to be an ill-suited fit for its new parent, Utmost Worldwide, an insurance-based investments product provider, which acquired the former’s global operations in 2018.

Utmost’s latest published financial statements, for the 12 months to year-end 2018, showed that Generali’s Bahamas business generated $3.209m in net profits that year based on $29.422m worth of gross premiums.

That represented an improvement on the prior year’s $286,000 net loss on the back of $25.965m in gross premiums written.