Self Reliance N.V.

What it is

N.V. Surinaamse Assurantie Maatschappij Self Reliance has been active since 1 November 1980 and has grown into Suriname’s second-largest insurer, writing general (non-life) business across health, motor, fire, travel, accident, pension and funeral lines.

In December 2007 the company launched a life-insurance subsidiary, Self Reliance Levensverzekeringen N.V.; it also holds a stake in the Tower cinema and in the local Clico entities. Beyond insurance, the company has invested a portion of its funds in other Surinamese financial institutions, including Hakrinbank, Finabank and De Surinaamsche Bank.

The parent company and its life-insurance subsidiary are both ISO 9001:2015 certified.

Who owns it

Self Reliance is not a state company: the Republic of Suriname holds an estimated 40% of the shares, while the remaining roughly 60% is in the hands of private shareholders. Those private holders span pension funds, companies, investors and a large number of individuals — the 2020 annual report counted more than 2,800 shareholders in total.

The supervisory board normally has six members: the state nominates two, and the other shareholders put forward the rest. Shares are freely transferable and listed on the Suriname Stock Exchange.

Who runs it

On 22 February 2020, Shirley P. Relyveld MSc was appointed Director and charged by the supervisory board with acting as Chief Director.

The management team pairs her with Robert A. Kasanrawi MBA MMA as Sub-Director Finance.

The leadership change came when her predecessor, Maurice Roemer, left to become Governor of the Centrale Bank van Suriname in February 2020. The name of the current supervisory board chair, Adelien Wijnerman, appears in press reporting from May 2026; no official governance disclosure confirms the full board composition at the time of writing.

The money, in plain words

For the financial year 2023, Self Reliance reported a net profit of SRD 229,415,246 (≈ US$229.4 million at the stated exchange rate of 1 SRD = 1 USD), and paid shareholders a dividend of SRD 11.60 (US$12)per share. No full-year revenue or total assets figure was findable in a machine-readable primary source during research — see the disclosure note below.

Not published: neither the company’s investor-relations pages at self-reliance.sr, the SSX listed-company directory at surinamestockexchange.com, nor the Centrale Bank van Suriname’s publicly accessible pages carry an income statement or balance sheet for Self Reliance. Suriname’s Law on Capital Markets (Wet Kapitaalmarkt, adopted 2014) established the legal framework for the SSX but does not, in practice, require listed companies to post full financial statements online; the SSX itself noted in its 2024 annual report that financial disclosure by issuers remains limited.

The 2020 annual report PDF hosted on the company’s own site was not machine-parseable. Accordingly, net margin, return on equity and price-to-earnings ratio cannot be calculated from verified primary data.

The SSX’s own index surged 355% in 2024 — driven partly by the Surinamese dollar’s stabilisation after years of hyperinflation. Adoption of international financial-reporting standards (IFRS) and the scarcity of qualified actuaries have added compliance costs across the industry.

What it is doing now

The biggest story at Self Reliance right now is a governance rupture, not an operational one. In May 2026 a shareholder published an open letter raising serious concerns about a summoned Extraordinary General Meeting and proposed board changes, warning that the events had implications beyond internal governance — touching public confidence in financial institutions and rule-of-law principles.

The meeting was requested by President Jennifer Geerlings-Simons; after correspondence with the board, she added a fourth agenda item seeking the removal of four supervisory directors — Albert Jubithana, Antoon Karg, Anvit Ramlakhan and Shyamal Bishoen. The president subsequently reversed that decision.

The company itself had already signalled a positive outlook for FY 2024.

What to watch

• Board stability. Weakening or disrupting the supervisory board has far-reaching consequences, including the risk of decision-making paralysis. Whether a settled six-member board is reconstituted — and approved by the Centrale Bank — is the immediate operational question.
• IFRS transition. Adoption of international reporting standards demands specialist knowledge that is scarce in Suriname, and the pace of that transition will determine how legible Self Reliance’s finances become to outside investors.
• State-minority tension. The state, as a minority shareholder, has rights — but also limits. How the government of Suriname exercises its 40% stake going forward sets a precedent for every mixed-ownership company on the SSX.
• FY 2024 results. Management pointed to a positive 2024 outlook; once audited accounts are published, investors will be able to judge whether the strong 2023 net profit was sustained through the SSX’s record-breaking year.

This is news, not investment advice.