The share­hold­ers of Colo­nial Life In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny [Trinidad] Lim­it­ed (Cli­co) yes­ter­day ap­point­ed a new board of di­rec­tors for the com­pa­ny.

At the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny’s first share­hold­ers’ meet­ing in more than a decade, Jen­nifer Fred­er­ick was se­lect­ed as the chair of the board. She was joined by San­dra Ku­mar-Camp­bell, Dara Keogh, Delia Joseph and Roger McLean. The five new di­rec­tors of the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny were nom­i­nat­ed by the ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er, CL Fi­nan­cial (in liq­ui­da­tion).

Ad­di­tion­al di­rec­tors are to be ap­point­ed to Cli­co’s board by the in­sur­er’s oth­er main share­hold­er, Cor­po­ra­tion Sole (the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance), at a sub­se­quent meet­ing, ac­cord­ing to a news re­lease is­sued by the com­pa­ny fol­low­ing its share­hold­ers’ meet­ing.

Cli­co, which was es­tab­lished in 1936, has 2,950,000 or­di­nary shares is­sued and out­stand­ing and three share­hold­ers, ac­cord­ing to the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny’s 2022 fil­ing with the Com­pa­nies Reg­istry:

• ↓CL Fi­nan­cial Ltd (in liq­ui­da­tion)—1,476,171 shares;

• ↓Cor­po­ra­tion Sole (Min­is­ter of Fi­nance—1,450,000 shares; and

• ↓Trustees of CL Fi­nan­cial Ltd—23,829 shares.

Cor­po­ra­tion Sole al­so owns 4,992,750,000 pref­er­ence shares in Cli­co, which Gov­ern­ment ac­quired on Sep­tem­ber 10, 2009, as part of the $5 bil­lion bailout of the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny.

That in­volved the in­jec­tion of ad­di­tion­al cap­i­tal in­to Cli­co by Gov­ern­ment by way of the ac­qui­si­tion of or­di­nary shares and pref­er­ence shares.

Some months be­fore the cap­i­tal in­fu­sion in­to Cli­co, ef­fec­tive Feb­ru­ary 13, 2009, the Cen­tral Bank as­sumed con­trol of the com­pa­ny as a re­sult of the ex­er­cise of its emer­gency pow­ers un­der sec­tion 44(D) of the Cen­tral Bank Act.

The Cen­tral Bank ex­it­ed con­trol of Cli­co and its sis­ter com­pa­ny, British Amer­i­can (Trinidad) in De­cem­ber 2022.

Yes­ter­day’s share­hold­ers’ meet­ing was held at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre and was fol­lowed by a Zoom meet­ing with the Cli­co staff.

The meet­ing re­sult­ed in the first board of di­rec­tors se­lect­ed by share­hold­ers since the Cen­tral Bank re­lin­quished con­trol in De­cem­ber 2022.

The pre­vi­ous board was chaired by Claire Gomez-Miller and its oth­er di­rec­tors were Charles De Sil­va, Mar­tin Franklin, Ul­ric Miller and Delia Joseph, who is the on­ly di­rec­tor to car­ry over to the new board.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, chair­man of the Cli­co Pol­i­cy­hold­ers Group, Pe­ter Per­me­ll, thanked the out­go­ing board for its ser­vice and ad­vised the new board it faced sig­nif­i­cant head­winds.

This in­cludes the need to set­tle the resid­ual bal­ance con­trac­tu­al­ly owed by Cli­co to its 15,000 as­sent­ing pol­i­cy­hold­ers, he said.