Just two weeks into its lifespan, Resolution Life Assurance Company has already paid out almost $1 million to Barbadians who were policyholders with the collapsed Colonial Life Insurance Company (CLICO).
Chief executive officer of Resolution Life, Cheryl Senhouse, made the announcement yesterday, after she and board members took Minister of Finance Chris Sinckler on a tour of the new company’s headquarters at Worthing, Christ Church.
“We have commenced payments to our annuitants and on average that payment is about $400 000 per month and we have provided payments for January and February in 2018,” she told the media yesterday. Most payments were paid to holders of pension plans.
“Thereafter we will be ensuring that current payments to those policyholders remain on track, and that the backlog amounts owed to these persons is settled within the six-month time frame that we originally outlined.”
She said the new company had not yet made a decision on whether it would be paying clients whose policies lapsed while CLICO was under judicial management.
“The transfer agreement would have provided for the company, at a later date, to assess that part of the portfolio and make a decision in terms of . . . an offer to those policyholders. The critical issue is that those policies would not have been included in the original funds which had been provided.
“It will be a business decision from the board, based on what is the value of those policies that have lapsed, and what level of benefit we could provide, and what assets are going to be available to back those policies if we put them back on the register here in Barbados,” Senhouse advised.
She said the company’s priority now would be to deal with the policyholders who so patiently waited for the matter to be concluded while CLICO was under judicial management.
Sinckler also took the opportunity to apologise to policyholders for the eight-year wait for monies to be paid.
“It has been a long wait, and at some sufferance in some instances. We do apologise for the length of time it took, but most of that was beyond our control because the company was under judicial management,” Sinckler stated. (BA)
