Gail Alexan­der

Colo­nial Life In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny Ltd post­ed prof­its of $5.2 bil­lion at the end of De­cem­ber 2014, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny's lat­est fi­nan­cial state­ments.The T&T Guardian ob­tained the in­for­ma­tion af­ter it was post­ed on Cli­co's web­site yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

A source said rev­e­la­tion of the in­for­ma­tion fol­lowed very re­cent queries by in­ter­est­ed par­ties this week to the Cen­tral Bank on var­i­ous as­pects of the Cli­co-CL is­sue, in­clud­ing when the last fi­nan­cial state­ments would be pub­lished.

In the state­ments post­ed on­line, it was not­ed that Cli­co's prof­it for the year (2014) at­trib­ut­able to eq­ui­ty hold­ers was $5,132,999 mil­lion. The 2013 fig­ure was $406 mil­lion.

The state­ments not­ed Pre­science In­sur­ance Con­sul­tants and Ac­tu­ar­ies' No­vem­ber 2015 as­sess­ment which put the com­pa­ny's pol­i­cy li­a­bil­i­ties at De­cem­ber 2014 as TT$20,748,271,000.

It was al­so stat­ed that the gain on sale of cor­po­rate se­cu­ri­ties in 2014 was due to the re­al­i­sa­tion of $5,252 mil­lion on the dis­pos­al of Methanol Hold­ings (Trinidad) Lim­it­ed shares.

The state­ments al­so de­tailed the process which the com­pa­ny has en­dured since Sep­tem­ber 2009, when gov­ern­ment in­ject­ed ad­di­tion­al cap­i­tal in­to the com­pa­ny via ac­qui­si­tion of or­di­nary shares and pref­er­ence shares, fol­low­ing the col­lapse of CL Fi­nan­cial.

This trans­ac­tion re­sult­ed in gov­ern­ment's own­er­ship of 49 per cent of the share cap­i­tal of the com­pa­ny.The state­ments in­di­cat­ed that "com­pa­ny man­age­ment has worked to man­age the ef­fects of cer­tain risks which ma­te­ri­alised in 2009. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the board is work­ing on fur­ther de­vel­op­ing the gov­er­nance frame­work which would al­low the com­pa­ny to man­age ef­fec­tive­ly its risks in the fu­ture.

Fu­ture plans in­clude: Es­tab­lish­ment of a for­mal Risk De­part­ment with­in the com­pa­ny, es­tab­lish­ment of a for­mal Com­pli­ance De­part­ment with­in the com­pa­ny, In­sur­ance and Fi­nan­cial Risk Man­age­ment, In­sur­ance Risk.

Among a mul­ti­tude of points, it was not­ed rental in­come aris­ing from the in­vest­ment prop­er­ties owned by the com­pa­ny amount­ed to $21.6 mil­lion (2013: $19.5 mil­lion).

CL Fi­nan­cial ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er Lawrence Duprey, who saw the state­ments yes­ter­day, told T&T Guardian that sit­u­a­tion had caused him to re­new his call to Gov­ern­ment and the Cen­tral Bank to ex­am­ine his plan to re­pay the debt to the state and re­gain con­trol of his com­pa­nies.

Duprey on­ly re­cent­ly sent a let­ter to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert seek­ing to open talks for him to re­gain own­er­ship of his com­pa­ny and has re­tained Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj SC to seek his in­ter­ests.

"You're now see­ing the mag­ni­tude of the com­pa­ny we built ... we built a very strong com­pa­ny to with­stand the ups and downs of the busi­ness cy­cles and here it is. The val­ue has man­i­fest­ed in these fi­nan­cial re­sults," Duprey said in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

He said the re­cent reg­u­la­tors of the com­pa­nies had failed to recog­nise the sit­u­a­tion and that the com­pa­nies were strong to the point of sur­viv­ing the eco­nom­ic down­turn.

"They sur­vived even in the bad times. It's a pity the founders' de­scen­dents were not al­lowed to play their true role in the busi­ness cy­cles it should have been," he added.

Lob­by­ing for man­age­ment of the com­pa­nies, he said: "The peo­ple who are there now are not re­al­ly man­ag­ing per se, since they're sim­ply ben­e­fit­ting from the strong foun­da­tion we put in.

"If they didn't dec­i­mate it by sell­ing it off, you could see where the com­pa­nies could have made a strong con­tri­bu­tion to T&T - and right now the coun­try needs a strong Cli­co. It must be al­lowed to work for the pub­lic."

Pol­i­cy­hold­er/share­hold­er Ker­ry Ram­jack, who said the lat­est fi­nan­cial state­ments echoed oth­er pol­i­cy­hold­ers' views, mean­while told the T&T Guardian that for the first time in years, the "pledged as­sets" of the com­pa­ny show the ac­tu­ar­ies' cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of $24.5 bil­lion in Cli­co's statu­to­ry fund and the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of li­a­bil­i­ties re­gard­ing pol­i­cy­hold­ers be­ing $20.7 mil­lion.

"So if we're at a sit­u­a­tion with two such fig­ures, why is the com­pa­ny still un­der Cen­tral Bank ju­ris­dic­tion, sub­ject to Sec­tion 44d (In­sur­ance Act) and why are all pol­i­cy­hold­ers not be­ing paid their con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions, and last, why is Cli­co not be­ing con­tin­ued to op­er­ate as a go­ing con­cern, be­cause it is in a healthy po­si­tion?" he asked.