May 2017 Financial News

Sagicor VP falls victim to internal restructuring

May 17, 2017

The post of Vice President for Corporate Communications and Marketing at Sagicor Financial Corporation has been made redundant.

However, top officials have given an assurance that no major layoffs were planned by the insurance giant in the short term.

“We continue to revise the organization structure but that does not mean any major changes in any staffing or anything like that,” said Chief Operating Officer and General Manager of Sagicor Life Inc Barbados Edward Clarke.

He stressed that even though Sagicor’s employees were well aware that “we are continuing to look at the structure in order to meet the business needs, there are no major changes planned at this time by Sagicor”.

In fact, he said only “minor” structural changes were being made.

Without giving any explanation for VP Anderson King’s sudden departure from the company after about two years in the top communications and marketing post, Clarke insisted that  structural changes within organizations were nothing unusual, and that they were being made “as we go along”.

During a recent media conference called to review the company’s 2016 performance and outlook, President and Chief Executive Officer of Sagicor Financial Corporation Dodridge Miller had also assured that “no drastic changes” would be made to the Barbados operations.

Instead, he told Barbados TODAY the company was continuously looking for ways to improve its local operations.

The last time Sagicor carried out any major staff cuts was in 2009 when the group sent home 43 people as part of a major organizational restructuring in Barbados, Jamaica, the United States and the Cayman Islands.

However, in recent months at least one local insurance company – the Bermuda-headquartered Insurance Corporation of Barbados Limited (ICBL) – has had to send home over a dozen workers, with more scheduled to go, as ICBL proceeds with its internal restructuring amid a hostile business environment that forced Sagicor to relocate its base of operations from Barbados to Bermuda last July.

The move followed Standard & Poor’s (S&P) downgrade of Sagicor Life’s rating from BB+ to BB-, and Sagicor Financial Ltd’s US$150 million ten year senior unsecured notes to B from BB-. That downgrade came on the heels of the lowering of Barbados’ sovereign rating to B from BB- by the same international ratings agency, less than two weeks prior.

However, since moving its headquarters S&P has re-affirmed the credit rating of Sagicor Finance (2015) Limited at BB- with stable outlook.

Source:
Marlon Madden
Barbados Today
Wednesday May 17, 2017

https://www.barbadostoday.bb/2017/05/17/sagicor-vp-falls-victim-to-internal-restructuring/