Locking them out of their offices was the final straw that broke the backs of CLICO insurance sales agents.
Close to 70 agents and managers of three top performing branches of the cash-strapped insurance giant resigned with immediate effect yesterday. They said they have faced six months of abuse by depositors and customers who wanted to surrender their insurance policies. They also endured half a year of what they described as neglect by CLICO, the Port of Spain-based subsidiary of the once mighty CL Financial conglomerate.
Agents and managers were abruptly locked out of the Valpark, St Clair and St James offices last Friday. Signs posted on the doors of the offices said they would be closed until further notice. The three were among the more profitable of CLICO’s more than 30 branches spread across the country and generate millions of dollars in annual revenue.
After they were locked out of their offices and the codes for their electronic card keys changed, the majority of agents refused to attend a meeting with CLICO chief executive Claude Musaib-Ali yesterday morning.
’We boycotted the meeting and agreed to resign with immediate effect,’ an agent, who did not want to be identified, told the Express in an interview yesterday.
Another agent said they had been asking CLICO’s head office to develop new marketing strategies to help restore confidence in the company, which has a statutory fund deficit in the $10 billion range.
The company, once the flagship company of the CL Financial empire, melted down late last year, after it could not repay hundreds of millions of dollars owed to depositors and pensioners.
Several agents said they had been burning through their savings in the past six months, as the company struggled to recover even with help from Government and the Central Bank. They said customers were clamouring for their matured deposits and money from their surrendered policies.
One agent told the Express that a client in his sixties who had a small surrender amount of $200,000 could not get his money from CLICO even though he needed the funds for eye surgery. The customer therefore borrowed money from a relative and is still waiting on CLICO, the agent said.
After they were locked out their offices on Friday, the agents were also not paid their salaries up to yesterday afternoon, one manager told the Express on condition of anonymity yesterday.
’We are sad to leave and we regret that we have had to resign, but we have no choice now,’ an agent said.
A few agents said they were pursuing possible job offers at other financial institutions.
Client accounts managed by the agents will be transferred to other branches, they said.
One agent added: ’We had no choice. They kept telling us there would be light at the end of the tunnel. But the tunnel kept getting darker and darker.’
At a briefing at the Central Bank Tower in Port of Spain last Monday, Central Bank Governor Ewart Williams and CLICO’s Musaib-Ali told reporters that the last six months could be seen as phase one of CLICO’s recovery.
’This phase has been characterised by an overwhelming demand for liquidity from clients holding annuities which had matured before the intervention of the Central Bank,’ Governor Williams said.
Williams said long-term business at the company had been maintained and the company was able to pay thousands of pensioners and medical claims through its own resources.
Musaib-Ali could not be immediately reached for comment on the departure of the top agents and managers yesterday.
