Two years after the CLICO insurance company collapse and rescue by the Trinidad and Tobago government, policyholders have finally started getting back some of the money they invested in the country’s largest insurer.
After several promises to repay policyholders by Christmas and then Carnival, the government has since paid approximately $33 million (US$5.2 million) to CLICO policyholders who invested in high-interest bearing Executive Flexible Premium Annuity financial instruments offered by the company.
The Trinidad Express reported that the Ministry of Finance said on Wednesday that the government had to date made $33 million in payments to EFPA owners with contracts valued at $75,000 or less.
“This represents payments to1,053 eligible payees,” the ministry said in a statement. “Over 80 per cent have chosen to have their payments deposited directly to their bank accounts and this has happened successfully.”
CLICO’s EFPAs were short-term deposit instruments, which had 25,000 customers and had liabilities of about $12 billion, Finance Minister Winston Dookeran said last September.
There are about 10,000 policyholders who hold investments of $75,000 each or less.
Total funding by the government and the Central Bank to rescue CLICO as at May last year stood at $7.3 billion. CLICO and another CL Financial subsidiary, British American, had combined assets of about $16 billion, but liabilities of around $23 billion.
