The National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) has restated its commitment to focus on two-pronged policies to make government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to transfer assets to insurance companies for adequate cover and sanity for the sector, irrespective of whose ox is gored.
NAICOM’s new position is a paradigm shift from the paddle along mode to the present well positioned and focus on policies aimed at steadily erasing the MDAs’ records of poor patronage of insurance policies and creating an industry suitable for the risks it was mandated to protect.
Deputy Commissioner for Instance (Technical), Sabiu Abubakar, made NAICOM’s position known recently at a forum of the Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria (CIIN), noting that the new phase of regulation was already being implemented and there are policies in the works to reinforce the commission’s new direction.
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While establishing the commission’s distinct Lever Push in the regulators perspectives, Abubakar, who represented the Commissioner for Insurance, Sunday Thomas, said NAICOM has almost finished work on guidelines for cover of assets of MDAs with collaboration of Federal Ministry of Finance, Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) and Head of Service (HoS) of the Federation.
The coming guidelines, he stated, would require MDAs to insure all assets and non- compliance would be sanctioned, adding: “It is 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.
“Recently two insurance companies’ licences have been withdrawn and these are Niger Insurance and Standard Alliance Insurance. Though managing the death and failure of financial institutions is very demanding, nevertheless more may still be liquidated in order to sanitise the industry,” he added.
