INSURANCE companies have been charged to follow the rules of the profession. This is pertinent because if insurance companies follow the rule of the game they are not likely to run into the kind of problem that the banks ran into.
Prince Mike Ikupolati, president of West Africa Insurance Institute (WAII) who made this assertion noted that insurance business is not practiced the same way banking is done, saying that in insurance, there are procedures and rules of the game.
He therefore called on the National Insurance Commission (Naicom) to be specific and more alert to its responsibilities, saying they should have some indicators to monitor if unethical practices are happening.”
In his words, “I just don’t expect Naicom to go in and say those things are happening, I expect them to plug in some monitoring devises to ensure that insurance practitioners don’t go the way of the banks. That is what I expect Naicom to do now.”
Regretting that although there are sharp practices in the insurance sector, Ikupolati noted that one can’t compare the two sectors, saying that there are other things insurers do such as rate cutting and other things.
“I believe that Naicom should not wait until there is crisis. They should put in some monitoring devises to see that they do a total diagnosis of the industry and be able to know when they are going off course and when they are not going off course.
Meanwhile, Mr. Dan Okehi, managing director of Brickred Consult Limited and former managing director of InsurancePHB has charged Naicom to take a cue from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) by being sincere and make public the true financial positions of insurance companies.
This is hinged to the fact that most insurance companies have their books padded with outstanding debts in the name of income and assets.