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Colorado Bankers Life Insurance Company and Bankers Life Insurance Company of Florida are trying to keep protecting U.S. consumers against mortality and longevity risk while their holding company deals with concerns about its ownership.
The holding company — Global Bankers Insurance Group LLC of Durham, North Carolina — acquired Colorado Bankers Life in 2015 and Bankers Life of Florida in 2016. Eli Global LLC controls Global Bankers.
The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article suggesting that regulators in North Carolina let Greg Lindberg, the chairman and chief of Eli Global, had Global Bankers invest an unusually high percentage of the group's insurance companies in affiliates.
Lindberg responded with a press release arguing that the he never used dividends to take cash out of the life insurers, has invested more than $500 million in the U.S. insurers in the group, has paid for a team to develop a digital policy administration platform for the insurers' new insurance products, and has kept the U.S. insurers in the group well-capitalized.
U.S. Department of Justice officials in Charlotte, North Carolina, announced last week that a grand jury had indicted Lindberg, two business associates and the state Republican chairman in connection with allegations that Lindberg had tried to arrange to bribe the state insurance commissioner to take actions that would be helpful to Global Bankers.
The defendants appeared before a U.S. magistrate judge in Charlotte and pleaded not guilty.
