Nigeria’s Kari, Efekoha give backing for insurance sector integration in West Africa
The country’s insurance industry regulator the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) and the Nigerian Insurers Association (NIA) have given their backing to integration of insurance business in the West African sub-region.
They believe that a well coordinated regional integration of African insurers would enable build capacity, overcome business barriers, and speed up development of West Africa.
While they also agree that efforts should be sustained towards realization of the dream, they believe that only insurance industry alone cannot achieve integration, so requires the support of government and key stakeholders in the sub-region.
Mohammed Kari, commissioner for insurance speaking at the 2017 annual insurance conference of the West Africa Insurance Companies Association (WAICA) in Banjul, Gambia with the theme “Achieving Regional Integration in the Insurance Industry in West Africa Through Uniform Regional Compliance” said:
“A major lesson from the global financial crisis of 2007/2008 and the challenge it posed on territorial regulatory authorities of the financial architecture brought the need for deeper connectivity and collaboration among financial systems and markets across borders.”
Kari stated that supervisors need to put in place adequate coordination arrangement with other Supervisors on cross-border issues to facilitate the comprehensive oversight of entities within their regulatory purview.
“Thus, a symbiotic collaborative integration is achievable through an efficient platform for information sharing, comparison of supervisory methodologies and coordinated decision and action where appropriate. “
“While I commend the persistence of WAICA on this subject, we need to accept that we cannot achieve much by ourselves as an industry. We need to engage the ECOWAS political structure to recognise the need to rethinks beyond the historical colonial partitions and integrate the CIMAs and WAICAs of the sub-region to achieve real integration, Kari observed.
Eddie Efekoha, chairman, Nigerian Insurers Association in his presentation at the Conference said for insurers across West Africa to achieve regional integration, individual countries regulatory structures should be strengthened through total autonomy and there must be deliberate efforts to foster relationship within the sub region financial sector amongst other things.
According to him, there is also need for financial independence of the regulatory system in each of the countries within the sub region; countries regulatory institution should build the needed human capacity for effective market surveillance, trade associations must be strengthen to play a collaborative role in the harmonisation process and an in-depth understanding of the unique business process of each member states.
He also identified the need for technical capacity requirement amongst member states be standardised; a phased approach to harmonisation, desirable; building on the ECOWAS Brown Card System; borrowing a leave from the francophone countries, already have an harmonized regulatory framework and need to build African market for African.
Efekoha noted that insurance regulation in West Africa sub region is largely compliance based in which ‘one cap fits all’ approach predominates, adding that the level of collaboration between the operators and the regulator is less than satisfactory thus breeding suspicion.
He also pointed that the human capacity available in most of the regulatory institutions is less than required for effective supervisory oversight and that the current trans border operations by underwriting companies require that a full license be procured, adding that there are no formal relationship between the trade associations in the sub region.
Modestus Anaesoronye