CLICO policyholders may have to chalk up their investments in that institution as a loss.
That’s the view of financial adviser Anthony Christie, who also said that as Government worked to resolve the issue, people needed to be more aware of what their investments were doing.
Christie spoke last Wednesday night on the topic entitled How To Take Your Business From Entrepreneurship To Enterprise Leaving A Multi-Generational Legacy, during a presentation at Holy Innocents Church Annex, St Thomas.
He fielded questions afterwards, one of which was from a CLICO policyholder on whether he could realistically expect a return on his investment in the company.
“My assessment of what Government is trying to do with CLICO is sell it lock, stock and barrel. The majority of money in this scenario goes to the person who is doing the wind-up . . . and it has been going on for more than a year. The legal costs, the lawyers will get a significant portion, and the cost of the sale, the transfer of the assets and so on,” Christie said.
“So unless Government decides that it is going to foot the legal costs, because that is the intention, . . . you have to behave as if you have lost it. If it does come it will be pretty good. I know people who have passed away or people who would have been terminally sick, wanting to get back at it but can’t. It is a very terrible situation, but behave as if it is not going to come, but keep track of it.”
But he went on to advise: “The rule of investing here is not to put all your eggs into one basket and if you put your retirement plan into many things, do your reassessments, because it becomes extremely necessary to reassess the viability of financial institutions as we know them.”
He said the credit environment was one to keep an eye on now, because with the number of people becoming unemployed and defaulting rates increasing, several financial institutions were now recording significant declines in profits or were not making profits because of loan losses.
“So you have to keep your reassessments,” said the financial adviser.
Apart from the national recession, he said there were people who had been going through personal recessions for quite some time, and it was necessary to understand the financial environment they were operating in.
He also advised investors who developed concerns about where their money was to “move it if you begin to get nervous. Institutions don’t last forever.” (Green Bananas Media)