The
growth of the insurance industry in Trinidad and Tobago in the opening decades
of the 20th century did in truth reflect the overall prosperity of the islands.
This isnot to say that there was not real poverty, both rural and urban. There
was, however, a growing middle class, put upon by colonial prejudice, but
developing a creole culture of its own, buttressed with education and guided by
ambition and a desire for upward mobility, social and financial.
The
island’s economy was unique for the region. Sugar cane was big business.
British cartels, such as Taitt & Lyle, controlled tens of thousands of
acres of sugar cane, employing thousands at starvation wages. Although the
‘salad days’ of the 1850s were over, when good West Indian white sugar fetched
30 shillings per C.W.T., the industry did well on 20 shilling per C.W.T.
The
undoubted star performer, however, was cocoa, which climbed off the chart in
1900 with exports well in excess of 30 million pounds, making the turn of
phrase ‘the price of cocoa’ gain great currency in the local parlance.
But
of even greater significance, particularly for the future, was the
petrochemical industry. For if Trinidad could boast of the largest sugar
refining complex in the world, seccond only later to Puerto Rico, we could then
also boast of possessing the most modern oil refinery in the Caribbean, if not
the world.
Economically,
we were very well set up. This meant that there was a need to protect
financially the significant investments. Property, industrial installations,
goods, warehouses and transport were to be insured.
Life
insurance as a means of saving and as an investment was a new idea at the time
which was rapidly gaining ground, significantly so in the emerging middle
class. This was especially the case in that the banking system did not
accommodate the ‘small man’. Life insurance as a saving mechanism which paid
interest and could be used to secure loans, and which produced endowments, sums
that came to hand after retirement, all this secured futures at a time when
there were virtually no opportunities for ordinary people to possess investment
portfolios.
The
Standard Life Company had established itself in the Caribbean in the late 1850s
and become increasingly entrenched as a result of advancing capital for the
development of plantations, especially in the cocoa industry. This offered
quite a spread of potential clients from the owner and his family on to
managers; and downstream to the commission agents and their office staff, seein
ghtat many ofthe planters were also shippers and commission agents.
It
is of interest that this firm, chosen as and example, commenced its operation
in 1858 as the Colonial Insurance Company in the Caribbean with offices in
Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago. It was able to successfully
diversify its risks in the Caribbean’s several economies. It grew with these
economies, merging with other companies such as the Jamaica Mutual Insurance,
to position itself just short of 150 years later to become Guardian Life of the
Caribbean, and a local Trinidadian company by the 1970s. This move to localise
was not one that was neccessarily sought, but was a political reality. The
catalyst of this mandate was the Black Power uprising of 1970. Essentially, the
brains to carry all this forward were home-grown. Individuals such as Ian
McBride had grown up in the company. The same could be said of the several
heads of companies who emerged in the insurance industry by the early 1960s. Their
names give a sense of the evolution of the children of the educated Afro-Franco
creole culture of the 1900s. Insurance was one of the few areas of financial
enterprise in colonial Trinidad open to them, where prudence met keen business
acumen. For a coloured person in that period, the challenge was ultimately to
overcome the stereotype role that was imposed by colonial prejudice. One had to
re-invent oneself on a very profound level and be possessed of vision.
Who’s
Who in Insurance in the 1950s
-
William Montgomery Date, known to his friends as Pat, manager for Trinidad
Barbados, Leeward & Windward Islands of Confederation Life Association.
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Louis Edmond Ganteaume, A.C.C.S., Secretary, British Guiana and Trinidad Mutual
Fire insurance Co. Ltd.
-
John Vincent Gonsalves, General Manager, National Life Assurance Company of
Canada
-
Desmond Gerard Jobity, Secretary, Trinidad Motor Insurance Co. Ltd.
-
Bertram Godfrey Warner, District Manager, Sun Life Assurance Co. of Canada
-
John Elton Newbold, Secretary-in-charge, Trinidad Branch, Standard Life
Insurance Co.
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Louis Eugene Fisher, Branch Manager Manufacturer’s Life Insurance
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Kashi Nath Kaul, A.C.I.S., Divisional Resident Officer for the British
Caribbean New Asiatic Insurance Co. Ltd.
-
Garnet Johnson McCarthy, Chairman, Colonial Life Insurance Co. Ltd.
-
Cyril Oswald Monsanto, Superintendent of agencies, Colonial Life Insurance Co.
Ltd.
-
Lyndon O. Schuler, Branch Manager of Imperial Life Assurance Co.
Cyril
Lucius Duprey, Founder, Director and Secretary-Manager, Colonial Life Insurance
Ltd.
Duprey
was amongst those who benefitted as the result of reforms in the banking system
in the period after the civil unrest of the 1920s. The reforms had seen the
emergence of the ‘Penny Bank’, the Cooperative Bank, a saving institution, and
the Building and Loan Association, a loan and property development organisation
designed to help the small man. By the early 1960s, he was president of both.
He also served as director on the board of E.P. Gibbs Ltd., a local trading
company. born in Trinidad in 1897, he went to St. Joseph Government School and
later to colleges in the United States. He left Trinidad in 1920 and entered
the insurance business in Chicago and New York., where he organised the United
Mutual Benefit Association in 1933. In 1936, Duprey returned to Trinidad and
founded Colonial Life. He became a member of the Economic Advisory Board and
the Political Progress Group.
