Yesterday's application by attorneys representing 10 policyholders of Clico to begin the winding up of the company may be the beginning of the end of the insurance company that became one of T&T's most potent brand names. The insurance company, established 75 years ago by Cyril Duprey and Cyril Monsanto, survived a global economic depression, a world war and several cycles of boom and bust in the local economy to become one of the region's largest indigenous financial institution's under Cyril Duprey's nephew, Lawrence. Whether Clico survives as a stand-alone insurance company is likely to be determined by a judicial process that may take years to unfold.
None of the 10 policyholders in whose name the winding up action has been brought could have taken the decision to start the process that may lead to the winding up of Clico lightly. It is not surprising that it has taken two years and two months since the collapse of the insurance company for the filing of the winding-up petition. The grace period that the policyholders gave this Government and the previous one-before taking what may be terminal action-must be seen in the context of what Clico has come to symbolise: The thousands of people whose lives have been made better and more secure by their investments in the company and its stellar contributions to nation-building, the arts and sports.
That it had to come to this-a choice between saving a well-respected and iconic company and the hard-earned savings of thousands of T&T nationals-is a sad reflection on those in this Government who refused to consult the policyholders and who embraced opacity when transparency was required.
Many of Clico's 250,000 policyholders invested their life's savings in the company because of the mantra of its founder. "Give a man value, give a man service and he will support you," Cyril Duprey always emphasised. They would have invested in the now-controversial Executive Flexible Premium Annuities because those policies represented the value and service that the founder built his company on.
Tragically, in the last two years and two months, the ethos that Cyril Duprey breathed into Clico has become so much hot air that has blown the policyholders from pillar to post. Those who took the action to wind up Clico only did so because their backs were against the wall and they were left with no option. They would have suffered in silence when the Minister of Finance, Winston Dookeran, announced during the 2011 budget presentation on September 8, 2010, that the interest payments on their short-term investment products would be stopped because of some ghost accounts.
While waiting in vain on further word of these ghost accounts, the policyholders would have suffered because many of them had arranged their lives to depend on the monthly annuity cheques from Clico.
The indignity of having the financial rug pulled out from under their feet by executive fiat was amplified by the suggestion by the Minister of Finance and his advisers that the suspension (by ghost) of their interest payments should be stretched into a 20-year, zero-coupon bond. As if that were not enough, insult was added to serious financial injury when the 225,000 investors in the EFPAs were subjected to ridicule and contumely in a vicious carefully orchestrated campaign.
They were vilified as "greedy" risk-takers who went looking for the highest interest rate on the market. They were told that they deserved to lose everything because of the risks they took. Such descriptors, of course, fly in the face of the reality when brought face to face with some of the personalities who are taking the winding-up action: Eighty-year-old Percy Farrell, who spent decades managing the Aranguez Estate landholdings; retired UWI professor of English, Gordon Rohlehr, the internationally known scholar of calypso, and Norris Gomez, who spent years flying locals to their favourite destinations as a BWIA captain. It did not have to come to this.