African Alliance settles N1.3bn claims to policyholders
African Alliance Insurance Plc has acknowledged that the only way to make insurance attractive and tangible is for underwriting firms to pay genuine claims promptly.
Accordingly, the company said it has settled total claims of N1.3 billion from the 1st of October till date.
Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of African Alliance, Mrs. Joyce Ojemudia, who disclosed this during a courtesy visit of the executives of the National Association of Insurance and Pension Correspondents(NAIPCO) to the company in Lagos, noted that, the company is in business to settle claims.
Giving a breakdown of its claims history from October till date, the company said that it paid a total of N220.5 million as claims for group life insurance; for individual life including annuity, it paid N1.03 billion; for Esusu, it paid N2.3 million, while it paid N73.7 million as takaful claims.
Ojemudai said: “The products that we are selling in the insurance sector are intangible and the only way to make them tangible is to pay claims and pay promptly.”
According to her, insurance companies pay claims and it should be clear to the public that the sector exists to service their claims.
She said: “When you tell Nigerians to take up insurance, they always say that ‘God is my insurance’, but when we start sounding the message of claims payment very loud through the press, they will believe the press better.”
The African Alliance boss noted that the company is putting modalities in place to add more value to some of its products to sooth the coming year, stating: “When some of these products were actually put in the market, covid-19 was not around and nobody taught the impact of covid-19 will be as big as this. So as soon as we put some products in the proper perspective that will soothe 2021 business year, I am sure that we will start partnering with you to tell the public that we have products that will be of common interest to them.”
Also speaking, General Manager/Lead, Business Development, Mr. Steve Ajudua, said that there is potential of over a trillion income in the compulsory insurance products for the insurance industry and there is need for strict enforcement of that line of business.
He appealed to the media to assist the sector in propagating the benefits inherent in the compulsory insurance products, saying that it offers the industry a huge opportunity to increase insurance penetration as well as grow the economy.
In his introductory remark, the Chairman of NAIPCO, Mr. Chuks Okonta said that the maxim for the current exco is developmental journalism as it has taken up the mandate to add value to stakeholders in the insurance and pension sectors.
Okonta said: “We have taken up the mandate to add value to our shareholders in the sectors that we cover, as such our assignment is developmental in scope.
“Accordingly, we have decided to carry out these assignments through claims profiling, where we reach out to companies to give us their claims history to project for them. Another aspect is through product profiling where we reach out to companies to give us products in their kitty and we propagate the message for them. While the third is management profiling where we expose the management team of companies to the public so that the public know where they are coming from.”
According to Okonta, other channels through which the association carry the message of insurance and pension to the general public is through its annual conference, the association magazine as well as the advert to news initiative where the association breakdown the message in adverts of companies to the understanding of the public.
