WHEN bad things are happening such as the financial crisis in 2008 and the pandemic now, there are the nefarious ones who try to take advantage of the challenge to our financial institutions to maintain probity.
In late August 2008, advertisements appeared in our national broadsheets in which BDO and its then Bancassurance partner PhilamLife described a financial product which offered a reasonable return on the investment (25 percent for funds to be held by PhilamLife for five years). As added security the advertisement specified that the product was “principal protected” by PhilamLife’s then parent company, New York headquartered AIG.
Enticed by the advertisement, a family member invested in the product on Aug. 29 2008. This was done through BDO with whom we held an account. All the formalities were completed as we were told that we would receive the policy documents by Sept. 9.
We never received them.
By early September, AIG admitted to the US authorities that it could no longer meet its obligations. We wonder, therefore whether the late August advertisement was in good faith.
After a delay, the US government decided that it would bail out AIG. This necessitated, eventually, $182.3 billion (approximately P9 trillion, greater than the Philippine national debt at the time) funded by the US taxpayer.
PhilamLife unreasonably withheld P50,000 from us for doing nothing other than causing sleepless nights.
We made representations to the office of Teresita Sy-Coson at BDO. Although we did not receive a reply, we were aware that BDO legal asked PhilamLife to provide a timeline of the failed transaction.
Bacolod’s Police Station 2 and Barangay 17 were more effective than the financial institutions. Barangay Captain Fuentes told me that he thought document falsification was involved. I could not believe him, but five years later I found out that he was correct. The reason was the PhilamLife sent me, in 2014, a Quit Claim Form dated Sept. 19 2008 to which my signature was attached. I did not sign it. It became clear that BDO should be careful about giving insurance salesmen unfettered access to its customer signature cards.
In September 2010, thanks to the kindness of Melba Leonardia Tan, then a long-standing agent for PhilamLife, we had a meeting with Phil Hayman, then PhilamLife’s Chief Distribution Officer.
We explained that we had not received the policy documents that we had paid for. Phil asked us what redress we were seeking. “The truth,” we replied. “So do I,” he concurred and promised to carry out an independent audit. This did not transpire and he left the company soon afterwards.
By this time, PhilamLife was anxious to refund the money that it had unreasonably withheld from us. We, however, wanted the truth. After all, PhilamLife had called us liars.
PhilamLife has unnecessarily preserved the adversarial relationship it has had with us since September 2008. PhilamLife legal has threatened us with libel. This is unfortunate.
Art 354 of the Revised Penal Code says: “Every defamatory imputation is presumed to be malicious, even if true, if no good intention for making it is shown.”
We have good intentions. We wanted PhilamLife to realize that it had errant staff. (A customer care official could have verified this very quickly). Our veracity had been impugned. A senior manager from PhilamLife agreed that we should find the truth.
Neither Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), nor the Insurance Commission was able to help us.
We need better consumer protection./PN
