CLICO policy holders safe

The once solid insurance company CLICO has wound up in Guyana and Turks and Caicos. The government of Belize has placed CLICO under judicial management. And when the issue came up at the press conference today the P.M. took time out to point that though CLICO suffered from bad investments, he wanted policy holders in Belize to be assured that their insurance plans would be honored.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow
“Where there is a problem is with respect to other financial instruments that CLICO was dealing with. Basically annuities, there’s a name they call them flexible something but basically annuities. Now that aspect of the business was to some extent kind of speculative I mean they were paying—they were paying huge interest premiums and that one is the one that kinda got away. My understanding is that there is far less money—that the short falls there, if the people with these annuities were to be paid off now—if an attempt were to made to pay them off there is a short fall of well in excess of three million dollars and that’s where there is a problem. So in terms of life and health and medical benefits, policyholders even now via the arrangements that are in place under the judicial manager, will have their policies honored and the idea would be, as I said, turn these over to some other growing concern in Belize that would be interested in buying that portfolio because that portfolio is so very, very viable.”