Sean Nero

As Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert pre­pares to de­liv­er his mid-term bud­get re­view next week, an in­sur­ance ex­ec­u­tive is ap­peal­ing to him to make sure the long-de­layed In­sur­ance Bill is high on Gov­ern­ment's leg­isla­tive agen­da.

Robert Sover­all, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Sco­tia Life of T&T (Sco­tia In­sur­ance) said even as the Gov­ern­ment seeks to de­vise new strate­gies to cush­ion cit­i­zens from the ef­fects the re­ces­sion and the im­pact of falling en­er­gy prices, mak­ing the Bill law is too im­por­tant not to be a pri­or­i­ty.

He said more than five years af­ter re­vi­sions to the Bill were made and the doc­u­ment put out for pub­lic com­ment, it is time, for key steps in the process to be com­plet­ed so that in­sur­ers can be­gin con­duct­ing busi­ness un­der mod­ern rules.

Cit­ing the fall­out from the Cli­co and Hin­du Cred­it Union de­ba­cles, Sover­all said there are in­creas­ing calls for new cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion mea­sures for in­sur­ance com­pa­nies among the suite of rec­om­men­da­tions for the pro­tec­tion of pol­i­cy hold­ers.

Sover­all, a di­rec­tor on the board of the As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T In­sur­ance Com­pa­nies (AT­TIC), said the Cen­tral Bank had con­sult­ed with in­dus­try play­ers for more than 60 months, dur­ing which time in­sur­ance of­fi­cials were co-op­er­a­tive and par­tic­i­pa­tive with prac­ti­cal sug­ges­tions on the way for­ward for the in­dus­try.

"We ful­ly sup­port the most re­cent draft that is avail­able and all the pro­vi­sions with­in that Bill. For var­i­ous rea­sons, we have not been able to pass that piece of leg­is­la­tion but I am sure that the new in­sur­ance leg­is­la­tion will be high on their pri­or­i­ty," he said.

"The Bill was last laid in Par­lia­ment (in Ju­ly). When Par­lia­ment was pro­rogued in Ju­ly it lapsed. What will be re­quired now is for that Bill to be re-laid, there will prob­a­bly be a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) ap­point­ed to re­view all of the tech­ni­cal as­pects of the Bill, be­cause in­sur­ance leg­is­la­tion is very tech­ni­cal and Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment would prob­a­bly want some­body to look at it in de­tail. Once the JSC re­views it, they would then rec­om­mend for both Hous­es to ap­prove and I sus­pect that ap­proval will come quick­ly there­after," he said.

Sover­all said the in­dus­try cur­rent­ly op­er­ates un­der the In­sur­ance Act of 1980, which had been draft­ed many years be­fore it ac­tu­al­ly came in­to force. He said there have been many new de­vel­op­ments in the fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor and in the in­sur­ance in­dus­try since then.

"That leg­is­la­tion would not nec­es­sar­i­ly have an­tic­i­pat­ed all of the de­vel­op­ing ar­eas, par­tic­u­lar­ly with re­gards to prod­ucts and how they are ser­viced and how they op­er­ate, so that leg­is­la­tion cer­tain­ly needs to be up­dat­ed.

"There have been sev­er­al amend­ments to that leg­is­la­tion, the most re­cent be­ing in 2009 cit­ing the chal­lenges a cou­ple of in­sur­ance com­pa­ny found them­selves in. There were two sets of amend­ments in 2004 and 2007 but I be­lieve that there is a need to have a full over­haul of the leg­is­la­tion. We will be very hap­py to see that passed quick­ly," said.

About the Bill

The In­sur­ance Bill 2015 pro­vides a new reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work for the in­sur­ance in­dus­try and pro­vides for the reg­u­la­tion of pri­vate­ly ad­min­is­tered pen­sion fund plans.

When it be­comes law it will re­peal the ex­ist­ing In­sur­ance Act, Chap 84.01.

The Bill was in­tro­duced in the Sen­ate on April 21, 2015 by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai and was de­bat­ed over four sit­tings in the Up­per House. In pi­lot­ing de­bate of the leg­is­la­tion, Howai said the process of leg­isla­tive re­form had start­ed sev­er­al years ear­li­er in 2001 and over that time the Cen­tral Bank can con­duct­ed ex­ten­sive con­sul­ta­tions with in­dus­try stake­hold­ers.

At that time he told the Sen­ate: "What we have sought to do is in­tro­duce a Bill that is fair­ly com­pre­hen­sive. A lot of work has gone in­to it, a lot of feed­back from their in­dus­try, a lot of par­tic­i­pa­tion by stake­hold­ers, a lot of time and ef­fort by the reg­u­la­tors to get to the point where we think we have a fair­ly com­pre­hen­sive piece of leg­is­la­tion."

The Bill was passed by the Up­per House on May 26, with 23 vot­ing in sup­port, none against and four ab­sten­tions.

Howai laid the Bill in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on May 27 and it was de­bat­ed at the sit­ting of May 29 but lapsed on June 17, 2015.?