What insurers must focus on
Insurance commissioner Israel Kamuzora (right) discusses a point with National Insurance Company managing director Sam Kamanga (left) when the former visited the firm’s pavilion during the 19th Annual Insurance Event in Dar es Salaam yesterday. The event was organised by the Insurance Institute of Tanzania. Others in the photo are employee for the insurance firm. PHOTO | THE CITIZEN CORRESPONDENT
What you need to know:
Statistics show that only 13 per cent of Tanzanians have access to indemnity services, meaning stakeholders still have a lot to to.
Dar es Salaam. Insurance Commissioner Israel Kamuzora has urged companies in the field to conduct thorough analysis of market needs before rolling out new products as way of triggering the sector’s growth.
Speaking at the 19th Annual insurance event in Dar es Salaam yesterday, Mr Kamuzora said going by the 2013 figures, it was only 13 per cent of Tanzania’s population that has access to indemnity services, a development that calls for more creativity and innovation among providers of insurance services to meet market needs.
“You need to come up with new distribution channels including banks and mobile phones with a view to increasing penetration and making the market robust,” he said.
He said firms must also empower customers to strengthen the market. The business processes, he said, must be automated so as to ensure that customers are able to get the right documents at the right time and so help them to have confidence in the conduct of insurance firms.
Gracing the event, the deputy permanent secretary in the in the President’s Office (Public Service Management and Good Governance), Ms Susan Mlawi, shared similar sentiments, calling upon insurance stakeholders to work on issues that impede the growth of the sector.
The issues, she said include a lack of awareness and marketing whereby most people in the informal sector are currently without any insurance cover due to insufficient education and marketing.
There is also a challenge of poverty and structural problems, resulting from the fact that it is only about 20 per cent of Tanzania’s labour force that operates within the formal sector and thus making it difficult for a majority of the population to get regular incomes.
She urged insurance firms to address the challenge of a lack of trust and market confidence due to inadequate education and the absence of products that conform with needs of business and households.
“These constraints can be resolved by effective insurance education. Indeed the overall aim of insurance education should be to support the development of the sector to enable it improve penetration and to make a greater contribution to the economy” she said.
