The plot thickens - GFSC accused of neglience, taking out a vendetta, corruption, and more -
26 Nov - “The past 14 months have been an incredible insight into the innermost workings and culture of Gibraltar,” noted Julian Edwards, CEO of MCE Insurance, and MCE Insurance Company (now Green Realisations No 123 or GR). MCE Insurance Company made headlines earlier this week when the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission (GFSC) announced that the firm - which sold motorbike and car insurance to clients in the UK and Ireland - has entered into administration.
The move by Gibraltar’s regulator has been condemned by Edwards as not being in the best interests of policyholders or claimants and he noted that, upon taking advice, MCE strongly believes that the GFSC has acted negligently and in bad faith.
“I have independent witnesses to documented lies from the GFSC,” he said.
“I have found myself speechless on a large number of occasions as these aren’t small fabs, they’re material lies that have led to a cessation order which, in turn, has led to the complete restructuring of the business where a high number of jobs have been placed at risk of redundancy. We’re in a consultation period on that now. But it’s not only the people who work for me that are being affected – MCE has a huge value chain… so undoubtedly some business partners of MCE are going through a similar process now.”
Examining the timeline of what has occurred, Edwards stated that MCE had been working on transitioning its portfolio out of Gibraltar into a UK carrier and set up its plans to do so transparently. The GFSC are aware that on the week leading up to 05 November, MCE expected to sign a new capacity provider the following week. The company had a go-live date of either the first of December 2021 or the first of January 2022 – a mere matter of weeks, he said.
The business was undoubtedly solvent, Edwards stated. The capital charges that the GFSC had applied to the business were on top of structures that they had either proposed and/or approved, and resulted in an MCR breach. Under that breach, an organisation has one month to put forward a proposal for remedy and Edwards highlighted that MCE put one forward in a matter of days.
“Now, once you put your proposal in for a remedy of a breach, you then have a period of time to complete that remedy.” he said “We were proposing remedying that with immediate effect – and that is in a written proposal to the GFSC. In addition to that, because of the capital add-ons that were applied to the business, that would have resulted in an SCR breach. MCE put in a robust recovery plan that would have resulted in an SCR surplus based on all the information we had to hand – information calculated by independent actuaries.
“And because it’s actuarially driven, that means the regulators can have complete confidence in the underlying numbers that are being presented… So we feel this is a vendetta against our business and the way we were transitioning out.
And we feel the vendetta boiled over because we have genuine, bonafide complaints that are being registered with the GFSC and the finance minister of Gibraltar which detail corruption, coercion, cover-ups and, not for the first time to date, plain lies.”
Edwards asserted that he has senior Gibraltar people on the record confirming that this is common practice and “the culture of Gibraltar”, which he believes to be systemic. Insights have been gathered from senior members of the legal profession in Gibraltar and other professionals from regulated businesses. He has been warned that any complaints against a professional body in Gibraltar will go unresolved due to the structure of the Territory, he said, and he has heard from other firms facing similar challenges.
More at link.
