By Ekerete Ola Gam-Ikon
Someone out there thinks we have said enough about unpaid insurance claims. No, we have not!
These two scenarios will make it clearer:
- If the Insurers currently paying claims, and promptly too, should stop for 30 working days, many individuals will be driven into the poverty zone and organizations will slide towards closure in another 30 days thereafter!
- If the regulator, National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) decides that all outstanding claims should be paid in 60 days whilst announcing the setting up of Policyholders Protection Fund (PPF) to cater for unpaid claims of financially weak insurance companies going forward, the adoption of insurance by Nigerians will increase by 100 percent in 90 days!
We, the insuring public and the insurance industry in Nigeria have stayed too long on this curve and may never know we can make insurance work for us if we continue with our current inefficient and ineffective means of engagement.
Lots of Policyholders did not plan for or imagine the treatment they are getting now from supposed insurance big houses in Nigeria and the regulator needs to help them urgently.
Another year is ending and while we may awake every day and go to our offices, some Nigerians, against their wishes, are going into poverty after years of paying premiums consistently to the insurers they chose.
Today, insurance claims are not only the technical ones that are recorded out of the normal business of insurance but we also have employees owed salaries and suppliers owed the payments.
We can no longer continue to bring people into the market and assure them that they will not experience what others who have become Claimants are shouting about at the gate of the market!
No, it is not because of Nigeria, rather it is because the insurance industry in Nigeria has remained dependent on relationships and not service delivery, or service excellence.
Insurance can be, and indeed is, a social responsibility that can support people in their worst moments. We can do this if we understand that everyone that walks into the space to buy insurance would most likely come back to make a claim.
Let’s stop buying insurance, especially long-term insurance, from only those we have relationships with, except we are not planning to report claims when the unexpected happens.
The scenarios are clear, same as the outcomes, so we are the ones to decide that we should make insurance work for us.
Buy the right insurance from the right insurer through the right intermediary at the right time and from the right place!
Be alerted. You’re not only protecting yourself and future when you choose the right path, you’re also projecting the wellness that the peace of having insurance gives, even when claims occur.
I remain…
Assuredly Yours,
Ekerete Ola Gam-Ikon
+234-802-585-0344
olagamola@gmail.com
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