Supervisor of Insurance, Alma Gomez, told Amandala today that negotiations are currently underway with insurance companies in Belize, to see what could be done to preserve the over 10,800 health and life insurance policies held by Colonial Life Insurance Company (CLICO) in Belize.
Earlier this month, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Awich approved the appointment of Mark Hulse of Baker Tilly Hulse in Belize as judicial manager, and since then, said Gomez, Hulse has taken over the administration of the company.
According to Gomez, because the Caribbean court in the Bahamas, where the company is headquartered, has ordered liquidation, and Belize’s CLICO is merely a branch, it would not be kept as a going concern, but will be wound up in the coming months.
Most of the staff at CLICO have been let go, and some agents are now trying to get jobs with other insurance companies, said Gomez.
Hulse’s report on the status of CLICO is due to be filed with the Supreme Court on May 8 and ten days later, on May 18, the Supervisor of Insurance is due to return to the courtroom for the court to decide the next course of action for CLICO’s Belize branch. The court will also determine Hulse’s remuneration for his work as (provisional) judicial manager.
According to Gomez, it would take anywhere from two to three months for technical work to be done, to effect the transfer of insurance portfolios to another insurance company in Belize.
Gomez told us that she has met the court’s 7-day deadline to file an undertaking that if CLICO has no funds or assets to pay Hulse for his work, that the Supervisor of Insurance, an office within the Minister of Finance, would pick up the tab.
Finance Minister, Prime Minister Dean Barrow, said in response to queries from our newspaper last Wednesday on the CLICO matter that policyholders with life and medical/health packages with CLICO have nothing to worry about, since there are enough statutory deposits to take care of them, even if they want to cash out their policies.
However, those who hold riskier annuities, which he described as “speculative” and “discretionary” instruments, are in an entirely different boat, and he said that if those were to be paid off now by CLICO, it would leave a $3 million deficit.
“That is where there is a problem,” Barrow asserted.
He told us that life, health/medical policyholders “…will have their policies honored and the idea would be [to] turn these over to some other going concern in Belize that would be interested in buying…”
According to the Minister of Finance, at least one insurance company has already expressed interest in taking on the portfolios.
Gomez projects that the transfer of policies could take until July, as foreign actuaries would first have to assess the policies.