Geisha Kow­lessar

Gov­ern­ment will soon take to Par­lia­ment new in­sur­ance leg­is­la­tion that will elim­i­nate loop­holes cur­rent­ly ex­ploit­ed by some com­pa­nies. Mak­ing the an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day was Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an who was ad­dress­ing the Sev­enth Com­pli­ance Con­fer­ence on Mon­ey Laun­der­ing and Com­bat­ing the Fi­nanc­ing of Ter­ror­ism at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain. De­scrib­ing the lo­cal in­sur­ance sec­tor as a "weak links in our sys­tem," Dook­er­an said: "We are about to take to our Par­lia­ment a new in­sur­ance law that will en­sure that we can cur­tail, through the leg­isla­tive sys­tem, some of the loop­holes that have de­vel­oped in the past in the op­er­a­tions of in­sur­ance com­pa­nies as we con­tin­ue to strength­en the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of the coun­try to with­stand any shocks that may come from out­side our mar­ket de­vel­op­ments."

He said the new In­sur­ance Act was re­cent­ly laid in Par­lia­ment for de­bate in the "not too dis­tant fu­ture." A more "hands-on ap­proach" has been em­braced by Gov­ern­ment to en­sure prop­er and ef­fec­tive su­per­vi­sion of in­sur­ance com­pa­nies, Dook­er­an added. "For we have recog­nised that there can be le­git­i­ma­cy based on ad­her­ing to the rules and reg­u­la­tion, but that le­git­i­ma­cy can be un­der­mined by con­duct of a hands-on na­ture.

"Law, there­fore, is not on­ly forth­right in deal­ing with the prob­lems be­fore us, but in al­so look­ing ahead to en­sure that we can an­tic­i­pate what we be­lieve are some of the is­sues that must be ad­dressed in this in­ter­con­nect­ed world," Dook­er­an said. Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, mon­ey laun­der­ing is bad for busi­ness and small economies like T&T's must take ad­di­tion­al steps to pre­vent them from be­ing cat­e­gorised in an un­favourable man­ner.

"I say this be­cause now there are a num­ber of in­sti­tu­tions that have de­vel­oped in the world. The Glob­al Fo­rum on Trans­paren­cy and Ex­change of In­for­ma­tion for Tax Pur­pos­es and the Ex­trac­tive In­dus­tries Trans­paren­cy Ini­tia­tive are two in­sti­tu­tions that we have re­cent­ly agreed in Trinidad and To­ba­go to join and be­come mem­bers in or­der to en­sure there is no stone un­turned in our ef­fort to em­brace what is re­quired for pub­lic con­fi­dence in the Trinidad and To­ba­go fi­nan­cial sys­tem," Dook­er­an said. He said the coun­try has al­so em­braced the larg­er in­ter­na­tion­al en­vi­ron­ment in their ef­forts to deal with the prob­lem of mon­ey laun­der­ing. How­ev­er, he warned that in try­ing to es­tab­lish such stan­dards and in try­ing to de­vel­op rules and pro­ce­dures, the pe­cu­liar re­quire­ments of each coun­try must be tak­en in­to ac­count and there­fore the voice of small coun­tries can­not be ig­nored at the lev­el of pol­i­cy. "We at­tend these very many meet­ings not on­ly with the view of ad­her­ing to the com­pli­ance stan­dards that are set by the larg­er coun­tries of the world but to shape those stan­dards to be rel­e­vant to the needs of our own per­cep­tion of what is a sta­ble fi­nan­cial sys­tem.