CLICO Broke Barbados’ Law
By Selling Million In Annuities After Embattled Insurance Company Barred From Writing Business

By Tony Best

CLICO, the embattled Caribbean Insurance company, broke Barbados’ laws when it sold millions of dollars in annuities to Barbadians in recent times, long after it was barred from writing policies.

And the Supervisor of Insurance in Barbados may have to deal with that thorny problem.That blunt assessment has come from William Layne, Permanent Secretary of Barbados' Ministry of Finance and Chairman of the Oversight Committee set up by the Thompson Administration to study CLICO’s finances. He told the Carib News in New York after attending an investment insurance seminar sponsored by Invest Barbados that clearly CLICO had sold annuities at a time when it had been specifically told not to do so.

“They didn’t have authority to sell those policies, so in fact they were doing something illegal, the company was doing something illegal,” was the way Layne put it. As for the policy-holders, Bajans who are holding corporate paper from CLICO indicating that they had put their money into the company, Layne was quick to say that their interest was being protected by the Supervisor of Insurance.

“In so far as the policy holders (are concerned) they have the protection of the Supervisor of Insurance under the law,” he said. Layne, an accountant and a highly respected civil servant known for his insistence on following rules and regulation, regardless of who or what was involved, disagreed with former Prime Minister, Owen Arthur, who was quoted several days ago as saying that the annuity policy holders were now holding worthless pieces of paper. “I wouldn’t say the policies are worthless, they wouldn’t be,” Layne declared. “I can’t say what options they are under the law because I am not that cognizant of that aspect of the law. I think people would have bought the policies in good faith but the fact that the company had no authority to sell them is another matter.”

Dr. David Estwick, Minister of Economic Affairs, who delivered the feature address at the seminar in Manhattan attended by scores of American executives, Barbados government officials and Bajans in New York said that the annuity issue and other CLICO matters were being considered by the Oversight Committee led by Layne and he would await the panel’s recommendations before commenting on the next move.

“There is the oversight committee dealing with this matter. I think the former Prime Minister has the right to interpret the way he sees it,” asserted Dr. Estwick. “I think the oversight committee has a job to do and they are doing that job and I can only await the conclusions and the various reports of the Committee. From that data I would then have to infer one way or another whether they are valid pieces of paper or if they are waste as the former Prime Minister would have said.”

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