CHAIRMAN of the Colonial Life Insurance Company (Clico) policyholders group Peter Permell says he remains hopeful that any policyholders who were affected by company's collapse in 2009 could still be able to recover their money.
He made this statement on August 26 when asked to comment on the death of Clico chairman Lawrence Duprey.
Duprey, 89, died on August 24.
He inherited Clico from his uncle Cyril Duprey and expanded it into CL Financial, the largest local conglomerate and one of the first local insurance companies.
After the group collapsed in 2009, the government "bailed out" Clico at a cost, as of 2020, $30 billion.
Permell made no comment on Duprey's death
But he recalled that 225,000 policyholders were affected by Clico's crash.
Permell said those were people who held executive premium holder policies.
He recalled that in 2009, when the then PNM government intervened to bailout Clico, certain guarantees were made to those policyholders, in the hope that they could be able to recover the money they lost.
Permell said that stopped in September 2010, under the then People's Partnership (PP) government, when the PP expressed concerns about the payment of interest to policies which did not exist.
[caption id="attachment_1104996" align="alignnone" width="683"] Lawrence Duprey -[/caption]
He added that this was subsequently proven not to be true.
Permell said Clico had since paid back government all of the money it used to bail it out.
He added that the company was no longer under the supervision of the Central Bank as it was no longer considered to be in the red.
The bank announced the end of this arrangement, which began in 2009, in 2022.
Permell said Clico announced a profit of approximately $2 billion last year.
He added that the group had always advocated that the company pay back money to the shareholders once it was able to do so.
Permell hoped that good sense would prevail and there would be no need for any legal action.
Given the 15 years that have passed since the Clico collapse, Permell said a protracted legal battle to recover monies owed by the company to shareholders was in no one's interest.
He added that such a course of action was not being considered by his group at this time.
(With reporting by Ryan Hamilton-Davis)
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