09th January 2010
Sagicor statement on private placement

Sagicor Financial Corporation (Sagicor) is a strong financial institution. Throughout its long history, the Board and Management have always adopted a conservative and prudent approach to managing its business. Sagicor has implemented a comprehensive governance architecture and follows established risk management practices. In addition, we have remained true to our core business of insurance and ancillary financial services. This has served us well, and Sagicor has enjoyed excellent growth and profitability over the years, while maintaining strong capital ratios and a conservative investment risk profile.
We operate on the basis of a multi-year rolling business plan. An integral component of the business plan is a capital plan. This plan is constructed to ensure that Sagicor maintains a strong regulatory capital position in all its jurisdictions, protects its financial ratings and has the capacity to fund existing and planned business growth. Sagicor confirms that its current capital position achieves all of these objectives. Sagicor’s 2009 business plan included a capital raising by way of new equity to be issued in Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago and the United Kingdom. This new capital is required to finance our further expansion, primarily in diligently selected opportunities in the US and UK.
These two markets, which provide good geographic diversification, are delivering strong profitable growth and are contributing positively to the strength of the Sagicor Group. This will augur well for the Group’s continuing financial success.
After several months of working on the plan, we, along with our advisers, formed the view that market conditions were not appropriate for capital raising. Companies that had proceeded with a plan to raise capital did so at substantial discounts on their share price ranging from 10% to 30%. The Board believed that this was not in the best interest of our shareholders and therefore postponed the capital raising exercise, and adjusted our business plan accordingly. However, we conducted preliminary discussions with significant long-term institutional investors in both Barbados and Trinidad to gauge their appetite to participate in an equity issue. The private placement to the Barbados National Insurance Board was the culmination of these discussions.
Several questions have been raised in the press, and through queries to our staff. We address these questions below:
1. Is the company in financial difficulty?
The answer is NO. Sagicor is in good financial health. As at the end of our 3rd quarter September 30th 2009, our total capital stood at US $661 million, increasing from US $581 million at the end of 2008, entirely by internal growth and without any new capital injection. Our free capital comfortably exceeds regulatory standards, as well as the targets established by the Board, and compares favourably with strong companies internationally.

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