Insurance companies paying mature policies

THE OFFICE of the Supervisor of Insurance and Pensions has confirmed that CLICO Holdings (Barbados) Limited and sister company British American are doing all in their financial power to honour insurance policies that have matured.Acting Supervisor of Insurance, Vernese Brathwaite, told the SATURDAY SUN in a telephone interview yesterday, that even though the office had experienced an increase in complaints arising out of the financial debacle of Trinidad-based conglomerate CL Financial, which is the parent company of CLICO and British American, the regulatory institution was not being “bombarded at all”.“A lot of people want to cash in their policies. Some say they want to put on a house roof [or] they have lost their jobs or they need money to pay bills. Some want to take out pension plans that are locked in and they can’t really get it,” she said.Brathwaite said that the current trend was for CLICO and British American to pay on policies that had reached maturity, while delaying payment on those that had not.“The company may be saying that they are only paying maturities, yet a person might be complaining that they have not been paid funds at maturity. We call the company and say, ‘Since you say you are paying maturities right now, because that is what your funds would allow you to pay, why aren’t you paying this particular one, this a policy that has matured?’ Then they would review and pay,” she noted.She said the office was trying to allay the fears of policyholders because “the company can be bought over by somebody else and be a viable institution again. . . . “Especially British American – they have asked us to agree that they don’t pay all those claims at one time. There is a particular section under the Insurance Act that allows us to give the company that permission not to be paying claims all the time that have not matured.”Brathwaite, who stressed that she was not speaking on behalf of the Government or the Ministry of Finance, said: “There is definitely a waiting game until the company gets back on a better footing financially or if the company is put under, for example, judicial management, in which case the judicial manager through the court (the court will make an order) will then take hold of the whole company and then all policyholders’ claims will be looked after.”