Introduction

• Pages: 1-8

INTRODUCTION

This text explores insurance law in the Commonwealth Caribbean as it evolves amidst dynamic

reorganisation in global commerce with concomitant responses in the law. Commonwealth

Caribbean jurisdictions are 16 in number: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Bar-

bados, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, St

Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago and Turks

and Caicos. The reader will immediately note two apparent contradictions: Belize is located in

Central America, and Guyana is located on the northern edge of South America. These two

jurisdictions are members of the Commonwealth. History therefore binds them in the evolu-

tionary process of the legal system associated with centuries of British colonial rule.

Growth and development of the insurance industry highlights the socio-economic rele-

vance to the region of the legislative framework from its colonial roots to the current position

as an amalgamation of Australian, British, United States, Canadian and Caribbean law. The

regional integration movement and the Treaty of Chaguaramas,

1 the Caribbean Law Institute

and the model Insurance Bill

2 embody the construct for har monisation of insurance law in the

region.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY

During the period of colonial rule, the Commonwealth Caribbean insurance industry refl ected

its umbilical tie to the United Kingdom. Historically British insurance companies operated

through agencies – generally called branches – that possessed local underwriting powers.

3

Examples include the Phoenix Assurance Group, a British insurance entity with Barbados oper-

ations dating back to 1804. Another, Standard Life, established in Edinburgh in 1825, began

business in Barbados in 1846. Sun Life of Canada established operations in Barbados, Jamaica

and Trinidad and Tobago in 1879. The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company (Canadian),

less than a decade after incorporation by an Act of Parliament, established a Bermuda-based

agency in 1893; Jamaica and Trinidad quickly followed in 1894.

4 Indeed, although British fi r ms

predate North American companies’ regional operations, the latter, principally Canadian, sub-

sequently achieved dominance of the insurance market until as late as the early 1970s.

5

There were, however, indigenous institutions: the oldest indigenous life insurance concern

in the British Caribbean, the Barbados Mutual Assurance Society, opened its doors on Barba-

dos as early as 1840. This eventually became The Mutual as a result of a takeover of Life of

1 Civil Code 1879, Civil Code (Amendment) Ordinance 1956, Cap 242. See further D. White, ‘Some Prob-

lems of a Hybrid Legal System: A Case Study of St Lucia’ (1981) 30 ICLQ 862.

2 See the preamble to the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, 2001 (www.CARICOM.org).

3 C. A. Karch, The Rise of the Phoenix: The Barbados Mutual Life Assurance Society in Caribbean Economy and Society

1840–1990 (Ian Randle Publishers: 1997), p. 28; C. H. Denbow, Life Insurance Law in the Commonwealth Carib-

bean (Butterworths: 1984).

4 The Canadian Encyclopedia (www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/manulife-fi nancial-corporation);

see also L. A. Winter, The First Sixty Years, 1887–1947: A History of the Manufacturers Life Insurance Company

(Manufacturers Life Insurance Company: 1947). See www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/

manulife-fi nancial-corporation.

5 US insurance companies included American Life Insurance Company (ALICO) and British American

Insurance Company (BAICO).