CEO: RSA looks to LatAm for growth

UK insurance giant Royal & SunAlliance (NYSE: RSA) sees Latin America as a growth region for the group's international business, Simon Lee, RSA's CEO for international businesses told BNamericas. RSA recently completed a restructuring of its global portfolio, which included several disposals in the group's Latin American business, including life operations in Chile this year. "We are focusing on organic growth, but if there were portfolios of businesses that came up, we would run our slide-rule over those to see if we could make sense of them. I don't anticipate some huge, large-scale acquisition, because we are pursuing a niche strategy," Lee said. "If you make some large-scale acquisition, you'll probably end up paying for stuff that you don't want. But that doesn't discount smaller, more targeted acquisitions where we can convince ourselves that those make sense." RSA currently has operations in Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Uruguay and Venezuela and focuses on property & casualty insurance throughout the region, with a small life presence in Mexico and Colombia. RSA's global restructuring plan, which ended with the sale of their Japanese operation at the end of 3Q04, sought to rein in businesses that were spread too thin. During the portfolio shuffle, RSA exited 12 operations in 18 months. "We will undertake sensible growth, taking advantage of the emerging market status of the Latin American countries, and the opportunities that that provides. We will move forward on a sensible, prudent basis," Lee added. Royal & SunAlliance's Latin American and Caribbean division saw net written premiums fall 12% to 18mn British pounds (US$33.3mn) in Q304 compared to the same quarter 2003.