Guardian Life of the Caribbean Financial Statements

COMPANY OVERVIEW

• About Us
• Company History
• Board of Directors
• Executive Team
• Financial Statements
• AM Best
• Agents of the Month
  • 2008
  • 2007
  • 2006
  • 2005
• Guardian Life STARS
  • 2008
  • 2007
  • 2006
• Career Opportunities

• 2007 Annual Report (3.80MB)
• Equity Q1 2008
• Income Q1 2008
• Chairman's Statement March 31st 2008
• Cash Flow Q1 2008
• Balance Sheet Q1 2008
• Dividend March 2008

Understanding A Company's Accounts

The starting point for analysing a company is to read its report and accounts. Every company, whether listed on the stock market or not, is legally required to produce a set of accounts every year. Since our listing on the Jamaica Stock Exchange, GHL has had to produce figures showing profits or losses on a quarterly basis.

The Profit and loss account

This section of the report shows you how well the company has done over its trading period. It simply shows all the expenses incurred by the company, offset against the revenue it has earned. It will clearly show whether the company has made a profit or a loss and will usually show the same figures for the previous year for comparison purposes.

The balance sheet

A company’s balance sheet is completely different from the profit and loss account. Instead of giving you the profit or loss over the entire trading period, the balance sheet tells you the company’s financial position on a single date: the final day of its trading period.

As with the profit and loss account, the company will give figures for the previous year so you can compare where the company is now versus a year ago. Among the information the balance sheet will show is the company’s fixed assets, the change in the value of its assets (depreciation), and the company’s investments and the current assets. It will also show the stock and work in progress of the company, the money it is owed by debtors, the amount of cash held by the company, any liabilities, creditors, dividend payouts, share capital and the company’s reserves.

The cash flow statement

This part of a company’s accounts tells you how much cash has been flowing through the business. This gives you an important guide as to where cash has come from, how it has been used and, crucially, how strong the company is.   Monitoring a company’s cash flow is crucial because it can give you an early warning sign if the company is getting into financial difficulties. It will, for example, tell you what the cost of acquiring fixed assets has been and whether the company has taken out any loans or made any leasing arrangements.