Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

An ac­tu­ar­i­al cer­tifi­cate signed by Paul Ngai of Pre­science In­sur­ance Con­sul­tants and Ac­tu­ar­ies, dat­ed April 20, says he was ad­vised by the man­age­ment of Cli­co that the as­sets pledged to the Statu­to­ry Fund to­tal more than $22 bil­lion.

Ngai found there were suf­fi­cient as­sets in the fund to make a par­tial pay­ment in the set­tle­ment of cer­tain pol­i­cy­hold­er li­a­bil­i­ties.

This in­for­ma­tion was re­ceived by the Cli­co Pol­i­cy­hold­ers Group (CPG) over the week­end and mere days be­fore the 2016 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion.

Ngai stat­ed he ex­am­ined the fi­nan­cial po­si­tion and val­ued the pol­i­cy ben­e­fit li­a­bil­i­ties of the com­pa­ny for its Statu­to­ry Fund as at De­cem­ber 31, 2014.

The to­tal in the fund is $22,428,457,543.00

In the doc­u­ment, head­lined Ac­tu­ar­i­al Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pur­suant to the In­sur­ance Act of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Ngai wrote, "I meet the ap­pro­pri­ate qual­i­fi­ca­tion stan­dards and am fa­mil­iar with the val­u­a­tion and cap­i­tal ad­e­qua­cy re­quire­ments ap­plic­a­ble to life in­sur­ance com­pa­nies in Trinidad and To­ba­go."

In Ngai's opin­ion and based on unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial and source da­ta in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed to him by the man­age­ment of Cli­co, he found that:

�2The val­u­a­tion of the pol­i­cy li­a­bil­i­ties has been in ac­cor­dance with gen­er­al­ly ac­cept­ed ac­tu­ar­i­al prin­ci­ples with such changes as de­ter­mined and di­rec­tions made by the Draft In­sur­ance (Caribbean Pol­i­cy Pre­mi­um Method) Reg­u­la­tions;

�2The meth­ods and as­sump­tions used to cal­cu­late the pol­i­cy li­a­bil­i­ties are ap­pro­pri­ate to the cir­cum­stances of the Statu­to­ry Fund and of the said poli­cies and claims;

�2The amount of pol­i­cy li­a­bil­i­ties that makes prop­er pro­vi­sion for the fu­ture pay­ments un­der the Com­pa­ny's poli­cies is less than the to­tal amount of the Statu­to­ry Fund; and

�2As a re­sult, there are ad­e­quate as­sets in Cli­co's Statu­to­ry Fund to fund a par­tial pay­ment in the set­tle­ment of cer­tain pol­i­cy­hold­er li­a­bil­i­ties, backed by said Statu­to­ry Fund, to be made in ac­cor­dance with the Di­rec­tions of the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go."

John: I can­not go on record

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Cli­co's ter­mi­nat­ed man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Car­olyn John said she could not com­ment since it would be a breach of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.

"I can­not go on record."

Per­me­ll: When will $$ be paid?

CPG chair­man, Pe­ter Per­me­ll, yes­ter­day said the group was not at all sur­prised by this rev­e­la­tion as it was con­sis­tent with what sources had been say­ing. How­ev­er, he said, the big ques­tion was when would the pay­ment be made.

Per­me­ll said, "The on­ly thing we were not quite clear on was the ac­tu­al size of the fund in terms of dol­lar val­ue or the spe­cif­ic as­sets pledged. In short, these num­bers clear­ly in­di­cate that Cli­co now has suf­fi­cient as­sets to pay its con­trac­tu­al li­a­bil­i­ties in full, rel­a­tive to its Statu­to­ry Fund."

He ex­plained that from the $22.4 bil­lion, $8 bil­lion had to be de­duct­ed, which was pre­vi­ous­ly paid to the Gov­ern­ment and the "non-as­sent­ing" pol­i­cy­hold­ers rep­re­sent­ing 85 per cent of con­trac­tu­al li­a­bil­i­ties.

"This leaves a bal­ance of $14.4 bil­lion to cov­er $9 bil­lion of tra­di­tion­al pol­i­cy­hold­ers' li­a­bil­i­ties, $1.4 bil­lion to pay the Gov­ern­ment and non-as­sent­ing the re­main­ing 15 per cent; and the 'as­sent­ing' pol­i­cy­hold­ers the bal­ance con­trac­tu­al­ly due to them," he added.

He be­lieved the in­for­ma­tion would be help­ful to new Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in get­ting a bet­ter ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the "true facts" rel­a­tive to the Cli­co Res­o­lu­tion Plan, par­tic­u­lar­ly in light of his pre­de­ces­sor Lar­ry Howai's ap­par­ent chal­lenges in ob­tain­ing in­for­ma­tion from Cli­co and the Cen­tral Bank. The CPG is now call­ing for an ur­gent meet­ing with the new Fi­nance Min­is­ter.

Per­me­ll re­ferred to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley's state­ment in the run up to the gen­er­al elec­tion that, "We of the PNM, have no record of turn­ing our backs on a gov­ern­ment com­mit­ment made by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and when this Gov­ern­ment has made that com­mit­ment we will pay you the mon­ey."

The CPG chair­man said this was equal­ly ap­plic­a­ble to Cli­co pol­i­cy­hold­ers and as Prime Min­is­ter, so far, Row­ley had not done any­thing to sug­gest that he was not a man of his word.

Per­me­ll said, "It is now a mat­ter of his­to­ry that the PNM lost the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion and was un­able to make good on its promise.

"Ac­cord­ing­ly, Dr Row­ley must be aware that it would be a trav­es­ty and a be­tray­al of the worst kind, hav­ing re­turned to gov­ern­ment, al­most as if by di­vine in­ter­ven­tion; and the PNM ei­ther re­neges or fails to com­plete their task for a sec­ond time, in cir­cum­stances where the Statu­to­ry Fund is now ful­ly fund­ed with over $22.4 bil­lion."

n Con­tin­ues on Page A13

BOX

Flash­back–Cli­co col­lapse

Gov­ern­ment was forced to bail out Cli­co af­ter it col­lapsed in Jan­u­ary 2009.

A Jan­u­ary 30, 2009, re­lease from the Cen­tral Bank head­lined 'The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go Moves to Pro­tect In­vestors' stat­ed that in a move to pro­tect the in­ter­ests of de­pos­i­tors and pol­i­cy­hold­ers, the min­is­ter of Fi­nance Karen Nunez-Tesheira and the Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank had reached an agree­ment with the CL Fi­nan­cial Lim­it­ed Group for the pro­vi­sion of a pack­age of fi­nan­cial sup­port for the group's fi­nan­cial ser­vices com­pa­nies.

Some of the key el­e­ments of that agree­ment were as fol­lows:

*CL Fi­nan­cial will sell, liq­ui­date or col­lat­er­alise its as­sets and al­lo­cate the pro­ceeds to meet­ing in full all the re­quire­ments of the Statu­to­ry Fund for both Cli­co and the British Amer­i­can In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny (Baico), there­by pro­tect­ing, in full, all its in­sur­ance and pen­sion fund clients;

*The Gov­ern­ment will pro­vide fund­ing sup­port to ful­ly back Cli­co and Baico to meet any Statu­to­ry Fund deficits that might emerge af­ter the com­pa­ny has made all pos­si­ble arrange­ments to place sat­is­fac­to­ry lev­els of cash and oth­er as­sets in the Statu­to­ry Fund in or­der to en­sure the short as well as medi­um and long-term liq­uid­i­ty and sta­bil­i­ty of Cli­co.

*The Cen­tral Bank will as­sume con­trol of Cli­co In­vest­ment Bank un­der the pro­vi­sions of Sec­tion 44D of the Cen­tral Bank Act.

Ear­li­er this year, four for­mer Cli­co di­rec­tors re­ceived close to $36 mil­lion in pay­out.