BIPA makes a shift on audit

THE BARBADOS INVESTORS AND POLICYHOLDERS ALLIANCE (BIPA) is holding off its fight to prevent the forensic audit into collapsed insurance company CLICO from being sealed, for now.
In a statement issued yesterday following a meeting last Wednesday with Patrick Toppin, representative of judicial manager Deloitte Consulting Ltd, the group said it had decided to “concentrate its efforts on its primary goal, which is for a satisfactory financial outcome for policyholders”.
The alliance said that during the meeting, Toppin advised that the audit report contained matters which required further investigation and action and that making it public at this stage could compromise such proceedings.  
As a result, BIPA said it would not challenge the placing of the audit report under seal at this time.
“The truth will come out,” said president June Fowler, “but for now, we finally seem to be making progress in terms of the possibility of policyholders getting back their money, so we will focus on that and our court proceedings against the directors of CLICO and others, whilst keeping a close eye on what is happening as a result of the forensic audit.”
Last week’s meeting, which Fowler described as “cordial and productive”, was held at BIPA’s request to examine in detail two documents which had been submitted to the court last month: the CLICO judicial manager’s final recommendations, dated June 14, 2013, and an addendum to the June 14 report presented on June 24.  
The latter was submitted as a result of conditional approval being given by the Ministry of Finance to one of the recommendations in the first report for a solution to the CLICO debacle.BIPA indicated that while it was relieved that traditional policyholders would get all their money back, it was not pleased that Executive Flexible Premium Annuity policyholders would only get back the amount of their original investment. (PR/DP)