Red Sands Insurance Company (Europe) Limited was licensed in January 2004 principally to write legal expense insurance business. However, it has grown well beyond expectations and in just 5 years it is now licensed to write 16 of the 18 classes of general business.

Red Sands underwrites various lines of business, ranging from motor mechanical breakdown (now 2nd biggest provider in UK), insurance backed home improvement guarantees, gap & payment protection, personal accident to pet insurance. Premium has since grown to reach £22m for 2008, with budgeted growth for 2009 expected to exceed 20% despite the credit crunch.

During 2007, Red Sands decided to strengthen its local presence and became self-managed where previously we were managed by Aon. Over the past 18 months it has grown to 7 members of staff and has outgrown its old premises in Europort.

Further during 2007, Red Sands also decided to expand its business beyond the UK and Ireland. It now writes business in Spain, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Czech Republic, and Poland. Although we are still establishing a proper foothold in these countries, we do expect that these territories will become a very significant part of our business.

“The ability to conduct business from Gibraltar into all these territories via freedom of services clearly indicates that the decision to establish Red Sands in Gibraltar was the correct decision.” said Chris Lathey.
During April 2008 we acquired a stake in Haven Insurance Company Limited, an existing Gibraltar insurance company, which writes specialist motor business in the UK. We have been working very hard with management over the past 9 months to improve the profitability of this business in a tough market. Moving forward into 2009 we anticipate to write £15m of premium and once all the fundamentals of the business are right, will grow annual premiums to around the £25m mark.

In January 2009, we established Red Sands Life Assurance Company (Europe) Limited, a Gibraltar based life assurance company with £4.5m of new capital. A television campaign will shortly get underway in Poland to promote our life products and in time we expect this company to grow to a similar size as our general insurance company.

Overall with the 3 businesses we expect to write close to £50m of premium this year, following which we anticipate our momentum to get us to £100m premium during 2012.

Red Sands is part of the same ultimate grouping as the Hollard Insurance Group (largest independent insurer in South Africa, and second largest overall), which directly employs 1,500 people, has assets exceeding £1bn, and has 6.5m policyholders worldwide. Also part of Hollard is the Lombard Insurance Group, the largest surety and credit underwriter in South Africa.

The unique position of Gibraltar within the EU has very much made this the domicile of choice for us. We have access to the whole European market and have a responsive and well regulated environment in which to operate. We operate as an open market insurer in a very competitive marketplace, where credibility and reputation are essential to our success and to date, Gibraltar has provided that framework.

To see us through the next phase of our growth, we are moving to new premises at Ocean Village which will hopefully be big enough to service our future needs for clients and staff during the next few years.