The Insurance Commission vowed on Friday to start paying by April next year the second batch of Prudentialife Plans Inc. (PPI) policyholders, whose benefits were drastically reduced or forfeited altogether when the business was placed under liquidation in 2013 due to insolvency.
The liquidation payments will be funded by the proceeds from the sale of a 1,100-square-meter lot in Bonifacio Global City (BGC) owned by PPI which was sold at a record P45,682.05 per gross floor area.
Insurance Commissioner Emmanuel F. Dooc announced the approval of the sale in a news conference on Friday, noting that the price fetched by the PPI property represented a new record for properties within the BGC.
An earlier sale of a lot, also within BGC, owned by the Government Service Insurance System fetched a price of P41,666.67 per gross floor area.
The sale conducted after public bidding, was awarded to Q-Creatives and Imageers Inc. for P402 million, or 31 percent higher than the minimum bid price of P307 million.
“Sometimes, it also pays to wait because had we done a fire sale in the past, we would not have been able to sell it at this high price,” Dooc said.
He said that there are 208,515 policyholders of PPI educational plans on record, although only 109,853 policyholders actually filed claims during the distribution for first tranche of liquidation payments.
PPI was placed under liquidation in 2013 after it failed to come up with a viable rehabilitation plan during the time that it was under receivership.
The Insurance Commission decided to liquidate what remains of PPI’s assets and ordered the creation of a trust fund for each of the educational, pension and life plans sold by PPI.
The assets of PPI were classified as liquid and nonliquid, which is the basis for splitting the distribution into two tranches.
The release of the first tranche, which is from the liquid assets belonging to each trust fund, started in August 2013.
Dooc acknowledged the conversion of the nonliquid assets into cash required a long process, but said that the Insurance Commission wanted to protect the interest of the PPI plan holders by getting the best price for PPI’s nonliquid assets. Another property of PPI, this one in Pasig City, was seen sold by the end of the year.
Aside from selling the nonliquid assets, the Insurance Commission will also pursue the corporate assets of PPI which will be divided among the plan holders and other creditors of the collapsed preneed company.