CEO: Seguros Inbursa to expand in LatAm markets

Mexico's fourth largest insurer Seguros Inbursa is looking at several startup projects and acquisitions in South and Central America as part of its international expansion plans, company CEO José Morales told BNamericas. "We want to operate in Latin America," Morales said in an interview in Mexico City. "We are already present as reinsurers and the next step is to [operate] as an insurer." Seguros Inbursa wants to start operations in a country where it currently provides reinsurance during the next 18 months, Morales said. Seguros Inbursa offers reinsurance in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala and El Salvador. Seguros Inbursa, which forms part of the business empire of Mexico's wealthiest man Carlos Slim, will soon join other Slim companies that have looked south for opportunities. Financial group Inbursa is in the process of spinning off infrastructure investment company Ideal that will fund projects in Mexico and Latin America, while telecoms giants Telmex and América Móvil have acquired companies from Argentina to El Salvador during the last three years. "We aren't going to be in a lot of markets at the same time. We have never managed the company's operations outside [of Mexico] so we'll have to consolidate in one country before moving on to the second," Morales said. Seguros Inbursa could soon be the second Mexican-owned financial company to expand into other Latin American countries, after consumer finance bank Banco Azteca received a banking license in Panama earlier this year with plans to start operations in Peru, Guatemala and Honduras. Seguros Inbursa, which had sales of nearly 9bn pesos (US$801mn) in 2004, was reported by Reuters last May to be interested in growing its market share by acquiring the portfolios of foreign insurers. "Right now we are not looking at anything but if an opportunity was to come up we would look at it," Morales said.