BAICO policyholders in St Kitts and Nevis could see some form of payout by the end of the summer, though at this stage judicial managers are not saying how much. Stakeholders in St. Kitts and Nevis were in March given an update by members of the judicial management team, on the efforts to settle claims on British American Insurance Company policies.
While the official amounts could not be given, the figure of EC$150 million has been referred to by various regional government officials, including Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerritt.
There are several conditions that need to be met however, before a payout can be finalized. As a first step, governments of the region will have to pass legislation specifically for the purpose of providing for the settlement. So far only three have done so: Antigua, Grenada and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
A second crucial step is that the proposal must be accepted by a simple majority of policy holders who attend a future meeting, whose claims make up not less than 75 percent of the claims. The meeting will be held at the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank in St. Kitts, with three other satellite locations connected via teleconference. The date of that meeting is yet to be set.
The third condition is that the Court must accept the conditions of the offer.
BAICO branches in the ECCU and other territories have been under Judicial Management since 2009, after BAICO and CLICO’s parent company CL Financial of Trinidad crashed.
Meanwhile the government of SKN is discussing how it can assist BAICO policyholders who lost their deposits when the company collapsed in 2009.According to a recent Post Cabinet briefing, the St. Kitts and Nevis government is “determined to have further discussions [on] the BAICO matter with the Governor of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank”.
Attorney General and Minister of Information Vincent Byron Jr. says the government is looking at draft legislation designed to provide payment to those policyholders whose claims have not been settled.
Meanwhile Plans by Barbados to restructure the collapsed Clico Life Insurance Company are causing the new Governor of the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank some concern.
But not only that, Timothy Antoine is frustrated at the slow pace of criminal investigations involving those who ran the affairs of the failed company and getting justice for policyholders.