Bahrain-based Solidarity Group Holding, the largest Takaful Group in the world, has announced the acquisition of a majority stake in Al Ahlia Insurance Company in a deal worth BD10.7 million ($27.8 million).

Founded more than 40 years ago, Al Ahlia Insurance is one of the oldest and largest insurance companies in Bahrain operating in all classes of insurance.

“As part of its growth strategy, Solidarity Group actively pursues promising expansion opportunities in the insurance industry locally and within the MENA region as a whole” said Solidarity Group chairman, Khalid Abdulla-Janahi.

“We are delighted to add Al Ahlia Insurance to our portfolio of strategic investments, which we plan to consolidate at a later stage with our existing Bahrain operations through our fully owned subsidiary Solidarity General Takaful,” he added.

“Taking into consideration the saturated local market, consolidation becomes a necessity in order to create larger and stronger financial institutions capable of competing locally and offer a unique customer experience. The new merged entity will result ultimately in being the largest Takaful Company and one of the leading top tier insurance players in Bahrain,” Janahi said.

“At this stage we are working closely with Al Ahlia Insurance to accelerate the transition process and to draw up a post-merger integration plan that best leverages the strengths of the two companies and better serve our client base. We are relying on our experience in a recent and very similar exercise carried out in the Jordanian market with very successful integration and merger results.

“Solidarity Group, with its newly acquired subsidiary, will reinforce its position as the leading Takaful Group not only in Bahrain and the region but globally,” he added.

“The growth opportunity in global Takaful and insurance markets is very promising. Our ever expanding footprint coupled with investment grade credit ratings of our underlying operations, gives us the ideal platform to exploit those opportunities in order to enhance and advance our overall stakeholders value and interests”.
 
“The acquisition is by far the largest such transaction to take place in Bahrain in the past couple of decades.

“We take pride in our strategy to continually develop and improve the insurance markets in which we operate in through pioneering land-mark initiatives. We are looking forward to what we believe will be an exciting era for the Insurance and Takaful industry in Bahrain.

“We thank the shareholders of Al Ahlia for accepting and approving our offer and we extend our appreciation to the chairman Dr Osama Al Baharna and our partners for their support and confidence in Solidarity Group,” he concluded. – TradeArabia News Service