Call enquiry into Mutual Life's demise
published: Friday | February 7, 2003
THE EDITOR, Sir:
AS A participating policyholder, I am (like many thousands of Jamaicans) a former part-owner and also past employee of the Jamaica Mutual Life. I continue to feel some responsibility and enormous embarrassment at the failure of this landmark Jamaican institution. And, seeing Michael Lee-Chin handing over his cheque for the purchase of the Twin Towers is a bittersweet occasion for me.
As with the similarly failed National Commercial Bank, I am delighted that the Towers are bought by one of us who has done so well for himself and the image of Jamaica. One still cannot, however, digest the implication of the failure of these two Jamaican icons with nary a comment for the enlightenment and or guidance of our new and emerging cadre of entrepreneurs and managers. Accordingly, I am again asking for a public enquiry into the failure of Mutual Life. The Minister of Finance, Dr. Omar Davies, will confirm that I have felt that this enquiry should have taken place from its demise in 1999.
It is generally felt that there were two causative factors to the financial meltdown that changed the course of business in the turbulent 1990s. One is given as the high interest rate policy that made millionaires of savers (who capitalised on the high interest rates) and bankrupts and paupers of borrowers, while most others looked on and wondered what was happening. The other is given as the inexperience, intemperance, weak management, greed, get-rich-quick mentality or financial impropriety of the management of the institutions that failed.
In the case of Mutual Life, (and the same probably applies to the NCB) it boasted, at least on paper, what was called some of the country's most exalted managers and the members of its board of directors were no less highly regarded. So, what happened? How come we failed so miserably while others were able to survive?
Only a public enquiry can get to the root of this national and financial tragedy and give us a chance to learn some sobering management lessons.
