NAICOM Tasks Insurance Firms On Premiums

L-R: National Coordinator, Traders Rights Initiative, Comrade Christopher Okpala, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chief Ojo Maduekwe and Moderator, Dr Okey Ikechukwu, at the South-East Economic Summit in Enugu yesterday.
Photo: NAN

The National Insurance
Commission (NAICOM) has advised insurance companies and brokers to collect all outstanding premiums before submitting their yearly financial reports.
The Director (Inspectorate) in NAICOM, Mr Barineka Thompson,  gave this advice in an interview with journalists in Lagos.
He said the advice was imperative because the Commission did not have the power to write-off any outstanding premium in the financial report of a firm.
He said that request by the Nigerian Council of Registered Insurance Brokers that outstanding premiums of firms from 2009 to 2011 to be written off could not be guaranteed.
“Everything about financial report is being handled by the Financial Regulatory Council (FRC) and the country has embraced the International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS),” he said.
Thompson said that insurance companies and brokers should endeavour to collect all their outstanding premiums to maintain clean books.
He said that the issue of outstanding premiums was one of the reasons the commission enforced “no premium, no insurance cover.
The director urged the insuring public to cultivate the culture of paying premium whenever they were.
He said that insurance operators, especially brokers, should avoid any business deal that would endanger the industry.
According to him, the ‘no premium, no cover’ policy has come to stay and the insuring public should pay in full for all their insured products.
He said that the commission, on its part, would ensure prompt payment of claims in case of the unexpected.