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More Questions Than Answers In CLICO Failure
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By CANDIA DAMES,
Guardian News Editor -
candia@nasguard.com:

The CLICO debacle has ensnared a wide range of countries across the region and has raised questions about whether regulators' early warning systems failed to detect the disastrous decision making that triggered a multi-nation domino effect and brought into jeopardy the investments of thousands of Caribbean policyholders, more than 20,000 of whom are Bahamians.

Now, regulators are asking what went wrong.

The question will be the focus of a meeting in Trinidad and Tobago tomorrow to conduct a post-mortem in the wake of the stunning collapse of CLICO and problems facing British American Trinidad, a subsidiary of C L Financial, CLICO's parent company.

"It will be a review of the entire regulatory process to understand lessons learnt," said Bahamas Registrar of Insurance Lennox McCartney yesterday. That review, he said, could result in recommendations for legislative changes. McCartney, who has been in that position for about a year, steered away from pointing fingers and said it was too early to say whether local regulators did enough to protect Bahamian policyholders from the CLICO disaster.

"It needs an objective view," he said. "We attempted to address the problems as they are."

In the two weeks since the Supreme Court granted a winding up order appointing Craig Tony Gomez provisional liquidator for CLICO (Bahamas), questions about whether local regulators acted quickly enough, or whether they knew the depth of CLICO's problems, have been raised repeatedly.

CLICO Bahamas was petitioned into liquidation due to its insolvency on two counts, Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham has said: it was unable to pay claims of US$2.6 million in the Turks and Caicos Islands, and its liabilities were estimated to exceed its assets by at least $9 million.

A week ago, Ingraham indicated that the genesis of CLICO's troubles stretches back years — before his current administration and he suggested that the Christie administration ignored the signs.

"The money started to leave and to go outside in 2004 when $37 million went, not while we were in office," Ingraham said.

"I don't think it was done with anybody's permission in The Bahamas...but I do know The Bahamas knew about it for a long time and I don't want to draw any conclusions, but The Bahamas knew about it for a long time and more should have been done some time ago about it."

He said it appears that CLICO never sought the required "no objection" from The Bahamas registrar of insurance companies in connection with the company's investments, loans to subsidiaries or related party transactions.

While Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Turks and Caicos Islands and The Bahamas have featured prominently in the CLICO discussion, the fallout is wide reaching. Other jurisdictions affected are Anguilla, Antigua, Barbados, Belize, the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname and Bermuda.

Regulators from all those places, with the exception of Bermuda, are scheduled to attend the meeting of regulators in Trinidad, a follow-up meeting to one held in Barbados last week.

Amid ongoing discussion about the action or inaction of regional regulators, Trinidad's i95.5fm reported yesterday that that nation's Central Bank Governor Ewart Williams said nothing could have been done about the problems within CLICO because its auditors over the last four years had given a clean bill of health to the company.

A note to shareholders in financial statements last year said The Bahamas Division of CLICO performed "well in 2007", with premium income increasing by 40 percent, inclusive of increases in the annuities line of business of 110 percent.

According to i95.5fm, Williams revealed that in Trinidad CLICO was one of the companies that had resisted the central bank's intervention years ago.

Williams reportedly said the bank tried to get CLICO to stop selling some of its products, but there was resistance.

The Trinidad and Tobago Express, meanwhile, reported that Prime Minister Patrick Manning said, "There are a number of lessons to be learned from this CLICO issue, and [there] certainly is need for much more regional co-operation than has occurred in the past."

And Caribbean Net News reported that Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo noted that closer cooperation among financial regulators from the different territories is absolutely necessary.

"If we are going to have financial integration in CARICOM, we will have to ensure that we have a regional regulatory body such as a college of regulators," Jagdeo was quoted as saying.

The news site opined that some of the regulatory changes that CARICOM will have to consider would be whether to prevent conglomerates from raising finance for real sector activities through related parties or alternatively regulate against excessive inter-company transactions. While, around the region, there are some regulations to prevent concentration of investment in particular sectors, CARICOM may have to, in light of what has happened with CLICO, also want to regulate against concentration of investment in one or two institutions.

In The Bahamas, the liquidator continues his assessment of CLICO Bahamas' assets and liabilities and is preparing financial packages for the four insurance firms considering purchasing the company's portfolio.

Regarding claims that certain people had inside information about what was about to transpire with CLICO Bahamas before the company went into liquidation and were able to pull their money out, a Nassau Guardian source close to the process said yesterday, "When a decision was made it was done in a very small group on a very confidential basis. When it happened, it happened."

thenassauguardian

March 12, 2009 | 10:00 AM Comments  0 comments

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