(Trinidad Guardian) The Central Bank on Wednesday declared that at no time in the last 21 months did it state that all Colonial Life Insurance Company (Clico) policy contracts were to be honoured, in any of the statements made between the announcement of Clico’s collapse on January 2009 to today. The Central Bank said therefore, legal action should not be taken against it. It was responding to a letter dated September 23, 2010 from attorney-at-law, Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, who represents the Clico Policyholders Protection Association.
The response of the Central Bank came by way of a full-page newspaper advertisement in yesterday’s Guardian. “It was not reasonable for policyholders to have interpreted those statements of the Bank, ‘as constituting a clear and unambiguous representation,’ that all policy contracts would be honoured in accordance with the full terms and conditions thereof.” “Rather, the Bank, working together with the Government of T&T (GORTT), was seeking to assure that, in the developing situation, the Clico policyholders would have been offered the best possible protection, subject to reasonable public policy constraints,” CBTT said in a statement.
The Maharaj letter requested that the CBTT should respond to the letter in seven days or else the policyholders would exercise their rights. That was more than a month ago. In the statement, the Central Bank said: “The Bank was not able in law to give any binding assurance of the nature claimed, since the bank had no power to provide financial assistance to Clico, but was conveying and supporting the financial resolution strategy of the GORTT, in the best interest of the policyholders.” CBTT said under section 44F (5) and 44D of the Central Bank Act, the bank may be given instructions by the Minister of Finance and would comply to those instructions.
The CBTT said it considers the Clico proposal outlined in the 2011 budget by Minister of Finance Winston Dookeran “to be an offer of an option of financial assistance to policyholders which is not inconsistent with the bank’s efforts to find an acceptable solution in the changed circumstances.”