CLICO POLICYHOLDERS are cautiously optimistic about an offer by Canadian management agency, Canada Loyal Financial, to buy all of the assets of Clico International Life (CIL) Insurance Limited and totally repay the principal sums to policyholders and investors in Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean.
Chairman of the Barbados Investors and Policyholders Alliance (BIPA), June Fowler, said while the offer had excited many policyholders, based on the number of calls she had received in the last few days, she wanted them to bear in mind that the due diligence on this company would take time.
“The court and the Government would still have to rubberstamp the setting up of a new company and the judicial manager would still have to consider all the offers on the table before accepting, hopefully, the one that is most beneficial to the policyholders. How long will this process take? We do not know,” she told the DAILY NATION.
Fowler added that while this offer might seem to be finally providing a satisfactory solution to the CLICO debacle stretching back to the collapse of Trinidadian parent company CL Financial in 2009, there was “an inertia and a lethargy and a lack of critical cooperation that have dogged the path to resolution over the past five years”.
She therefore said she hoped such delays would not result in the deal falling apart and causing suffering policyholders to lose out.
“If this deal is better than all the others, we hope that it would not turn out to be another Four Seasons, where you have to go back to the drawing board and start afresh, where people get frustrated with all that has taken place to delay the process,” said the BIPA head.
