Insurers, telcos urged to collaborate
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of MTN Ghana, Mr Ebenezer Twum Asante, is encouraging greater collaboration between insurers and telecommunication companies offering mobile money services to help improve insurance penetration in the country.
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He explained that it was time for insurance and related businesses to take advantage of available data services from the telcos in order to reach the unserved market.
“Beyond the existing collaboration telcos have with insurance companies in the area of micro-insurance, there are also many areas the two industries could form a stronger collaboration to improve insurance penetration in Ghana,” Mr Asante said at the Ghana Reinsurance Company’s eigth Cedants’ Awards Night at the weekend in Accra.
As of September 2016, the insurance penetration rate in the country was less than two per cent, with more than 88.8 per cent of Ghanaians, representing about 23 million people, being uninsured.
That, in the view of Mr Asante, was uninspiring, adding that it was the responsibility of insurance companies to deploy measures to correct that anomaly.
“There are over 35 million smart devices in this country... There are technologies to make those devices to cease functioning completely in case they are reported stolen, so there should be minimum room for abuse,” he said.
Exceeding expectation
The Managing Director of the Ghana Reinsurance Company Limited, Mr George Y. Mensah, said it was important for players in the insurance industry to embrace technology to meet or exceed expectations of customers.
“Advances in the information technology are transforming underwriting capacities of insurers or reinsurers by improving our ability to analyse risks and helping us to manage concentration and accumulation of exposures,” he said.
According to him, the growing sophistication of information technology is further creating a long-term competitive advantage for insurers who use refined data to develop clearer insights into the underwriting decision-making process.
Elsewhere, he said, industry players were making extensive use of wide-ranging databases such as lists of motor vehicle registrations as well as licensed service providers to help decide which risks to accept, how to profile them and what premiums to charge.
“In recent times, we have also observed the power of social media which has the potential to transform insurance marketing into new cost dimensions and methods for product distribution.”
He added that social media was quickly evolving and it had the potential to significantly alter the way insurance business was conducted in the areas of marketing, underwriting, and claims processing as well as customer retention.
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Adopt technology
The Commissioner of Insurance, Mr Justice Yaw Ofori, who called on players in the insurance industry to adopt technology, added that “as insurers we can not apply the same skill and expect different result at the end.”
“We need to go the extra mile by investing heavily in the necessary tool for our trade such as robust software, relevant and intensive staff training for staff, and research development,” he said
He added that with this, industry stakeholders could improve service delivery through adequate pricing and improvement in product benefits.
The eigth Cedants Awards Night, which was on the theme: “Embracing Technological Innovations for the Growth of the Insurance Industry,” saw a lot of insurance companies awarded for the roles they played in the industry in 2016.
Prudential Life Insurance Ghana was adjudged “Cedant of the Year”.