New insurance co. enters Belize market
When buying insurance, Belizeans now have one more company to choose from. Barbados based United Insurance Company Limited has been granted a license to operate in Belize with Belize Insurance Centre as its agent. Although the company’s launch takes place on Saturday, their community involvement began weeks ago. General Manager of Belize Insurance Centre, Cynthia Awe and Managing Director of United Insurance, Dave Blackman, says community development is an important part of their commitment.
Dave Blackman, Managing Dir., United Insurance Co.
“We are one of the few companies that are indigenous in the Caribbean, who write throughout the Caribbean and we expect to bring our expertise and hopefully it will work for all our stakeholders and in particularly the policy holders in Belize.”
Ann-Marie Williams
“How lucrative is the insurance business?”
Dave Blackman
“Not very lucrative actually. In recent times the cost of insurance is particularly high. You known you would have had a few hurricanes in Belize over the last couple of years. The same has been in the northern Caribbean and this has sent the cost of re-insurance skyrocketing and therefore the margins are very, very small.”
Cynthia Awe, Gen. Manager, Belize Insurance Centre
“In Barbados there’s quite a bit of roundabouts and it’s a common practice back there for individual companies or corporate companies to maintain roundabouts.”
“I could recall David Alleyne’s first visit to Belize. As he passed the roundabout, he said ‘You know what Cynthia, I want to he involved in this.’ So I said ‘Involved to what extent.’ And he said ‘I want to maintain this.’ I told him if we get our license, we’ll seek that. And the minute we got our license, we entered into discussions with the Mayor of the city, Mr. Fonseca and expresses our desire. He said how fortunate because the timing was right in that the Barclays Bank, which spearheaded the project, actually maintained the roundabout up until February and here we came at the first of March and just follow suit.”
“Belize Insurance Centre is big on civic pride as well as having had quite a number of essays for young students, we did a walk-a-thon to aid NOPCA.”
Ann-Marie Williams
“The Youth Athletic Foundation, under the auspices of Marion Jones, will be given a handsome donation. Tell me more.”
Cynthia Awe
“We have not yet divulged this information in that we have not really set a figure. But we internally have committed to giving the platinum donation, which is the highest that has been requested and we will plan that shortly.”
United Insurance Company Limited started in Barbados in 1977 and today operates in Antigua, Montserrat, St. Lucia, Dominica, Trinidad and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
