ABUJA: The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) and the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) on Wednesday agreed to collaborate towards ridding the marine sector of fake insurance policies which had caused significant revenue leakages to the economy.
The proposed deal will allow the insurance industry utilise the customs IT portal to seamlessly verify genuine and counterfeit insurance certificates which are rife at the seaports where goods are cleared.
Speaking in Abuja during a courtesy visit to the Comptroller-General of Customs (CGC), Col. Hameed Ibrahim Ali (rtd), Commissioner for Insurance (CFI), Mr. Mohammed Kari said the prevalence of counterfeit insurance policies at the seaports presently constituted a major problems in the industry.
He said:”That’s one of the major problems we have really. The insurances that are taken to cover imports into Nigeria are supposed to be by the Nigerian insurance operator but unfortunately, the customs service doesn’t have the facility to identify which is fake and which is not.
“So what they said they’ve always done is that where there’s no insurance or where they can’t confirm whether it’s fake or otherwise, they just added the value of the insurance to calculate the CIF but they don’t pursue the insurance aspect which is a big loss to the industry and the Nigerian economy.”
He said:”But now we have agreed to work on that and assist them and we are going to work with the market offices committee of the NIA to come up with something that’ll would be synchronised with the customs portal so that at a click of a button, they can confirm the authenticity of certificates to be genuine or not.”
Kari further decried a development whereby inexperienced government agencies undertake insurance cover without recourse to the commission for appropriate guidance.
However, the customs boss, who described NAICOM’s visit as apt and time, welcomed proposals by the commission to set up a team of expert to train and properly advise and streamline its insurance policy.
But he also charged the regulator to effect improvement in claims settlement and publicise genuine and licensed insurance operators to save the public from falling victims of fake policy issuers. He also said the lack of commensurate refund on policy remained a challenge for the insurance industry.
He lamented that some of the customs officers who died in the line of duty were yet to receive their benefits from their insurers.
He said:”The commissioner has graciously agreed to give us some experts who would now sit with our own people and teach them what insurance is all about, and train them so we have some people who have knowledge of insurance and I think this is something that is of noble course and we are sincerely accept and we are grateful for it.
“Insurance is something that we need to understand the basics and rudiment; what it means to us and how do we get value. And I think with your coming, you’ve taken that pressure off me because now I know we here to go.”
Meanwhile, It further emerged that following the expiration of the September 30 deadline by NAICOM for insurance operators to pay all claims in their books, the sum of over N40 billion may have been settled as claims from July when the directive took effect to September.
Also, Wednesday, the CFI disclosed that efforts were being made to simplify the level of English language use in drawing policy documents by insurance operators to ensure that policy holders understand every letter of a policy before signing up.
This, according to him is to help consumers who are often confused with insurance jargons which were sometimes misleading.
Asked to give an update on the directive on claims resettlement, he said:”We have collected from the market, the statistics of what they’ve done in the period we’ve asked them to settle which was September 30 and the information we got was very interesting. As soon as we finish with the details, we will let you know.
“But we found that claims in those three months were a multiple of four or five times of the same period of the previous year. And this is an amount of over N10 billion settled in that period. The exact amount will come out as soon as we finish the exercise-because immediately after September 30th, we asked all the operators to give us the details of what they’ve settled for that period; now we’ll compare it with the original date we collected for the outstanding claims in their books and we would see who had been able to fully comply and how much they have complied.”
He said:”But we’ve been getting letters of commendation and appreciation from the policy holders and the consumers; they’ve never seen the insurance industry pay claims as they’ve done in the recent time.”
Singapore, Nigeria trade volume hits N846b
SINGAPORE: The trade volume between Nigeria and Singapore reached N846bn from 2011 to 2015, while the absolute balance of trade...
