CASTRIES, St Lucia – The High Court has approved the appointment of Richard Surage as judicial manager of the St. Lucia operations of the Colonial Life Insurance Company International Life Insurance Limited (CIL).
The appointment of the judicial manager is part of the initiative by Eastern Caribbean governments to recover some of the assets of policy holders with the Trinidad-based CLICO, which is part of the financially troubled CL Financial Group.
Surage of PKF Professional Services will submit an interim report to the High Court on May 3 and will have a further 60 days to present a more comprehensive report.
According to the Registrar of Insurance, Calixte Leon, last May, Barbados authorities had prevented CIL, from undertaking new insurance business in that island.
“As a result of the unreasonable delays in the settlement of claims under policies issued by the company and the regulatory intervention by its home regulator in Barbados to stop issuing new policies, all OECS (Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States) regulators decided to jointly intervene in the branch operations of CIL,” Leon said. He said despite the initiative by the sub-regional group “there continued to be unreasonable delays in the settlement of claims.
“Furthermore on February 4, 2011 the Supervisor of Insurance in Barbados announced the appointment of a judicial manager and on March 2, the Regulatory Authority in Barbados made an application to the Supreme Court of Barbados for an order of judicial management.” Leon said that the Registrar of Insurance in St. Lucia filed an application with the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court to place the St. Lucia Branch of CLICO under judicial management.
“On Monday April 11, after hearing a petition from the Registrar of Insurance and the Attorney General, the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court appointed Surage as judicial manager,” Leon added.
He said the judicial manager now has the authority, as an officer of the Court, to take immediate control of the management of CIL’s branch operations here.
Since the collapse of CLICO, local policy holders have been seeking to recover their investments with little success.
Last week, Prime Minister Stephenson King, while delivering the island’s annual budget, said that notwithstanding the efforts to resolve the problems caused by British American Insurance Company (BAICO) and CIL progress has been slow.
“The various proposals put forward to address the fallout from the collapse of those entities, have turned out to be unfeasible and the time has come to resolve maters in the best interest of the policy holders in St. Lucia.”
King said that in the case of BAICO, the government is exploring new options, while Eastern Caribbean governments have approved the establishment of a five million (EC) million (US$1.85 million) Health Insurance Support Fund as a Trust to be launched soon, to cover claims in respect of hospital and surgical policies and other obligations. (CMC)
