The Institute of Loss Adjusters of Nigeria (ILAN), is leaving no stone unturned to address whole the lingering issues of 31 years old out of practice scale of fee and cojoined outstanding professional fee and have cause to celebrate a new visibility.
In a combustive way ILAN President Oladiipo Olanrewaju early in the year, February 3rd, with his team visited the Commissioner for Insurance, Sunday Thomas and the issue of scale of fee, outstanding fee and enforcement of the revised market conduct guidelines among other issues were discussed. This was followed up in August 31st with a visit to Nigerian Insurers Association.
Olanrewaju told members who expressed misgivings on these issues at the ILAN House, Surulere, Lagos for the 41st AGM that aside from the two principal bodies, the Regulator and the Principal, several top CEOs of insurance companies have been engaged to booster the demand of ILAN for a scale of fee review and payment of outstanding fee which was suffocating members in several ways.
While several suggestions rang out on the approach to stick with Olarenwaju advised members to steady the pressure to pay on the insurers and should attach the 2018 National Insurance Commission intervention circular to raise their pressure to get paid.
Olarenwaju cleared that when the NAICOM circular was issued compliance received fresh breathe as “insurance companies responded positively. They were actually paying the outstanding adjusters fees but after a while everything went back to the old other again.”
The reverse of the Commission plan to clear the outstanding pushed back ‘our member companies back to the previous state. Presently, he said members have in their books a lot of outstanding that are not paid by insurance companies.
“In our last visit to NIA the Chairman promised that they are going to address that. How far they have gone with that I don’t know. But he promised that the Association will do something,” he stated.
He said NAICOM was monitoring the situation haven intervened in 2018 which the operators have caused to falter at no fault of the regulator, but have demanded from ILAN to submit the list of defaulting insurers which would be the platform for a renewed intervention. However, ILAN President said this request from NAICOM is being slowed to allow negotiation with NIA to settle the issues involved. This he said was made clear to NIA during the visit
He said a lot depended on both ILAN and NIA, we alone cannot solve it. We will put pressure on them. We expect them to get across to their members. According to him the practice has become an industry issue for insurers as it cuts across and exception of a few companies do not obliterate generalisation.
He said when the 2018 NAICOM response circular started showing signs of violation, the loss adjusters did not react immediately, but according to him, they decided to observe the unfolding trend and what was responsible was it as a result of loss of businesses. “But we discovered that our assumption was not true.
What is on ground now is for us to start mounting pressure on them and that is part of what I did when we visited NIA Chairman and we discussed all issues to this lingering challenge for loss adjusters,”” he stated.
