BARBADIAN POLICYHOLDERS and investors are being encouraged to go the liquidation route instead of allowing a new company to be formed out of the remnants of CLICO International Life Insurance Ltd.
Veteran chartered accountant Douglas Skeete told yesterday’s corporate policyholders’ meeting with judicial managers, Deloitte, that it would be “far better” for policyholders to settle for the likely return of just over 40 cents to the dollar from liquidation, than to wait five years for a new company and a promise of 100 per cent returns.
The idea of a new company was offered by Deloitte as the best of five options when the court-appointed judicial managers presented their recommendations to policyholders last week Thursday. Individual policyholders were promised the full value of their policies if the governments of Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean inject capital into the new company.
But Skeete argued: “It would be far better to take the 40 cents and go. I’m concerned with all that now has to be done, including transferring assets into this new company, looking for staff, opening bank accounts, setting up headquarters. I frankly don’t see all this happening in five years’ time. In the meantime, the Executive Flexible Premium annuitants are not being paid any interest and I’m concerned about poor individuals who have put in money, cannot get a cent now and have to wait for the next five years or more. That is unacceptable,” Skeete told the gathering of about 20 people at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre. (RJ)
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