National Insurance Commission is focused on two-pronged policy to make government departments transfer assets to insurers for adequate cover and sanity for insurance market not minding who’s ox is gored.
The regulator’s firm position is a coalescing departure from the paddle along mode to the present well positioned and focused policy aimed at steadily erasing government departments poor insurance purchase and creating an industry that is fit for the risks it protects.
The new phase of regulation is already rolled out and there are policies in the works to reinforce the direction of the Commission. This was made public yesterday at a forum of the Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria, where the deputy Commissioner for Insurance (technical) Sabiu Abubakar, heralded the position of NAICOM.
While establishing the Commission’ distinct lever push in “The Regulator’s Perspective of the Theme Paper,” Abubakar, who stood in for Commissioner for Insurance, Sunday Thomas, said NAICOM has almost finished work on guidelines for cover of assets of ministries, departments and agencies MDAs with the collaboration of Federal Ministry of Finance, Secretary to the Government of the Federation and Head of Service.
The coming guideline he stated, would require MDAs to insure all assets and non-compliance would be sanctioned. This up and until now cover snap by MDAs has been a concern to NAICOM prompting this comment, “It is very worrisome to the Commission that most assets and liabilities of government are never adequately and appropriately insured, which further accentuated the need for urgent measures to be put in place by the Commission to ensure that government gets value for money in the purchase of insurance by MDAs.”
On sanity in the market, the Commission said its ready to deploy all resources to put right what is out of place. “Recently two insurance companies licences have been withdrawn and these are: Niger Insurance and Standard Alliance Insurance. Though managing the death/failure of financial institution is very demanding, nevertheless more may still beliquidated in order to sanitise the insurance industry.
“We have strengthened our regulatory oversight and we implore operators to settle genuine claims in reasonable time and discharge their obligations,” he stated.
Also coming on board is the implementation of International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS 17) slated for January 2023 and, the Commission insists no shifting of date.
The Commission he cleared, has set-up working groups to facilitate the migration to IFRS 17 and urged insurance companies board to get prepared for the migration because the January 2023 deadline is fixed.
