Elizean CLICO policyholders
Surance acted in ‘good faith’
d faith or purporting to act in fulfilfficials
should be held to basic stane to the office they hold. It declared, ly disregarded those standards, it le to hold that they were acting in
made genuine, honest attempts to hieve them, then the public official e,” the court further noted. defence offered protection to public or dishonest or in wrongful collur who were so irresponsible as to be ence of foreseen risks.” uded that recklessness was another ith. upervisor was reckless, the CCJ a great degree of discretion in her e insurance industry. section 13(2) of the Act empowered ies that failed to comply with preensing renewals, and section 16(1) empowered her to cancel licences, these sections did not suggest that the Supervisor “must invariably take the most drastic actions available.”
Similarly, it noted that section 31(b) expressly authorised the Supervisor to consider any explanations made on behalf of the company before giving directions where the company had neglected to furnish, in a timely manner, documents relating to their statutory fund requirement.
The Court examined the Supervisor’s conduct in the regulation of CLICO in three areas—the treatment of the EFPA’s, CLICO’s licence renewals and its obligations to provide stipulated financial statements and CLICO’s statutory fund.
The Court found that the overall impression was that the Supervisor was mindful of CLICO’s non-compliance issues and had taken steps to continuously prod the Company into fulfilling its statutory responsibilities.
The Caribbean Court said that while it refrained from commenting on whether the Supervisor could have been less lenient with CLICO, “neither lack of robustness nor inadequate results from her efforts were sufficient to take her acts and omissions outside the realm of statutory protection the Act afforded her.”
“Neither the Supervisor nor anyone else could have foreseen CLICO’s sudden collapse,” the Court remarked.
The Court noted also, that the Supervisor’s testimony that section 16(2) precluded her from cancelling CLICO’S licence when it had consistently neglected to establish its statutory fund at 100%, was consistent with her approach towards CLICO in continually pressing the company rather than pulling the plug on it.
In all the circumstances, the Court held that the Supervisor had acted