A Statement issued by British American Insurance Company Limited (in Judicial Management) (“BAICO”) promises a payback to BAICO Owners of Flexible Premium Annuity (“FPA”) Policies.
Under an ECCU Policy Holders Relief Program, Owners of FPA Policies issued in the East Caribbean Currency Union will receive a payment equivalent to the amount of their policy balance as at August 1, 2009, plus the amount of any premiums that they have paid since that date.
The announcement from the ECCU governments points out that, “If a former FPA Policy Owner never received payment for an FPA Policy that matured or was surrendered before August 1, 2009, they will receive the amount of that surrender/maturity payment.”
There is a Condition of payment in what is described as Phase 1 of at least two: As a condition of payment, Owners must sign an Application and Release Form in which they give up all of their rights against BAICO and other specified persons in respect of the FPA Policy, and their Policy will be cancelled as at August 1, 2009.
BAICO is one of the companies, founded in 1993 by Trinidad-born entrepreneur Lawrence Duprey, who once held billions of dollars in assets in a portfolio of more than 60 companies in the Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. CL Financial’s business interests included banking and financial services, insurance, energy, real estate, forestry, insurance, medical services and retail.
The company helped transform Duprey into a billionaire and one of the Caribbean’s leading entrepreneurs.
CL Financial’s collapse has had a large spillover effect on other countries in a region of predominately small and fragile economies that were hard hit by the global recession.
Some of its subsidiaries, which included the Colonial Life Insurance Company (CLICO) and the British American Insurance Company (BAICO), drew money from individuals and countries from across the Caribbean.
The insurance subsidiaries “took in funds via deposit-like investment products as well as through traditional insurance and pension products and channeled these to over-leveraged sister companies and real estate developments which sharply lost value during the global crisis,” the International Monetary Fund said in a report earlier.
The impact rippled across 15 Caribbean states, leading some governments to carry out costly government interventions in regional subsidiaries.
Information coming out of the release says that detailed instructions will be published very soon guiding policy holders how to access the payback.
More information about this is available in aBrochure and the Application Form.
