Sean Nero

Pres­i­dent of the Ja­maica-based In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny of the West In­dies (ICWI) Paul Lalor says the com­pa­ny is pre­pared to meet all the pro­posed reg­u­la­to­ry re­quire­ments in the In­sur­ance Bill 2013.

The leg­is­la­tion calls for more ro­bust op­er­at­ing re­quire­ments for in­sur­ers in this ju­ris­dic­tion fol­low­ing the col­lapse of Cli­co and the Hin­du Cred­it Union. It al­so gives the Cen­tral Bank new over­sight pow­ers.

"We come from a high­ly reg­u­lat­ed en­vi­ron­ment any­way," Lalor told the T&T Guardian. "In most of the ter­ri­to­ries that we are in, we have had mas­sive leg­isla­tive changes in two or three of them al­ready, so we are quite used it.

"A lot of what we are do­ing now is what is go­ing to be in­tro­duced in the new leg­is­la­tion. Reg­is­ter­ing sales­man, an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing re­quire­ments, all of these we al­ready know how to do. We have been do­ing them since 2003 in Ja­maica, in Cay­man Is­lands, the Ba­hamas."

Lalor said ICWI has "quite a ro­bust com­pli­ance team and we are more than ready to be able to deal with the changes that are com­ing with this new leg­is­la­tion."

ICWI en­tered the lo­cal mar­ket in Oc­to­ber 2013 with the ac­qui­si­tion of Great North­ern which at the time wrote in­sur­ance poli­cies for an es­ti­mat­ed 24,000 clients. Since then, it has se­cured a li­cense to op­er­ate lo­cal­ly and plans to ex­pand in­to the prop­er­ty mar­ket.

"We are a com­pa­ny that wants to write both mo­tor and prop­er­ty, but we are start­ing with mo­tor and slow­ly start­ing to in­tro­duce prop­er­ty to the clients that we al­ready have. Through the bro­kers, we hope to pick up some in­cre­men­tal busi­ness as well and cre­ate a mul­ti-chan­nel busi­ness in the sense of hav­ing agents di­rect­ly through­out our twelve lo­ca­tions," Lalor said.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions about the im­pact of the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion's black­list of 14 Caribbean coun­tries, Lalor said that de­vel­op­ment was cause for con­cern since per­cep­tion alone could af­fect for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment in­to the re­gion. For­tu­nate­ly, the Caribbean has a cer­tain ap­peal and large ho­tel brands want­ed to have prop­er­ties in the re­gion, he said.

"So I think we can look for­ward to for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment. For­eign di­rect in­vest­ment is one of the eas­i­est ways for our Caribbean economies to get nec­es­sary in flows that al­low the econ­o­my to spin. If the econ­o­my spins, then in­sur­ance com­pa­nies be­come more rel­e­vant, be­cause we are the un­der­pin­ning of all eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and there­fore I am not sure that re­port is go­ing to dis­suade for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment.

"I do think there is a def­i­nite need for us as a re­gion to think about our tax­a­tion and to think about our oblig­a­tion to pay tax­es, be­cause that in and of it­self, too, as­sist the economies to grow."

He added: "In Ja­maica, we are cer­tain­ly over taxed in my opin­ion and we are easy tar­gets. We have to re­port on a quar­ter­ly ba­sis. Every­body knows what we are do­ing. We get reg­u­lar­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed with pe­ri­od­ic vis­its by the reg­u­la­tor. From that per­spec­tive, we are do­ing what we need to, we are pay­ing. What we want to make sure is that the eco­nom­ic im­pact of a re­port like that isn't detri­men­tal to FDI, be­cause that's what we need to keep our busi­ness­es grow­ing."