Sri Lankan insurer Ceylinco cleans up balance sheet

Apr 29, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka's Ceylinco Insurance Company has reported profits of 486.7 million for 2008, down 52.0 percent as the firm cleaned up its balance sheet by writing off more than 300 million rupees injected to related companies. Ceylinco Insurance revenues climbed 21 percent to 20.0 billion rupees and the firm paid 3.2 billion rupees as re-insurance premiums up 22 percent from last year.

Ceylinco said it sold 320,000 new policies in 2008 bringing the total to 1.4 million.

The firm had paid 6.9 billion rupees as claims (up 12 percent) and total benefits losses and expenses were put at 13.0 billion rupees, up from 10.6 billion in 2007.

Income from investments rose to 2.9 billion from 1.7 billion rupees.

The firm's net assets grew to 6.3 billion rupees from 4.5 billion and gross assets grew to 40.1 billion from 32.3 billion rupees.

Ceylinco Insurance said 9.5 billion rupees or 42 percent of its 23.1 billion in investments were in government securities, and 7.3 billion was in bank deposits.

Many Ceylinco group firms have run into difficulties after the collapse of Golden Key Credit Card Company, an unregulated firm.

In 2008 the firm wrote off 372 million rupees in share investments in related fir