Maiden Capacity Building Training for Insurance Agents launched in Kumasi

Major players in the Insurance industry are positioning their front line agents to whip up knowledge and patronage of insurance products in Ghana.

The initiative comes at a time the insurance penetration in Ghana remains at an unimpressive less than two percent per statistics of the National Insurance Commission (NIC).

An aggressive training has been launched in Kumasi for some 250 life and non-life insurance agents, insurance brokers, Bancassurance and micro-insurance agents.

The six day training ongoing at the Noda Hotel is being spearheaded by the National Insurance Commission (NIC), The Ghana Insurers Association (GIA), The Ghana Insurance Brokers Association (GIBA), and the Ghana Insurance Awareness Coordinators Group (IACG) in partnership with the Programme for Sustainable Economic Development (PSED) of the German Development Co-operation (GIZ).

Speaking to Ultimate News on the sidelines of the training, the Chairman of the IACG Mr. Wilson Tei explained that the possibility for changing the narrative of low insurance penetration in Ghana will be driven by education which squarely lies at the purview of Agents who sell insurance products.

He explained that, “There was some work done by the GIZ and the NIC a few years back to determine the reasons why insurance penetration is still below 2%in Ghana and basically it was found that there is not much knowledge of insurance outside the insurance industry.”

“In solving this, if we left out the people who actually are the consultants to the public, we will not get anywhere. And when I talk about the consultants I am talking about the sales agents who are actually the first point of contact to the people and carry the message of insurance to the public.”

He also pointed out that Insurance Companies have seen a greater need to begin targeting the informal sector of the economy which appears to be growing at a faster pace and outstripping the gains being made in the strictly formal business operations in Ghana.

Mr Wilson Tei was confident that the insurance industry will attain at least 5% insurance penetration by 2022, if the training which is expected to be rolled out across the country achieves its results.

The president of the National association of Ghana Insurance Agents Isaac Kwame Amanor Ofori described the maiden training as timely and needful to sharpen the skills of agents and to foster a better professional relationship between agents and their principal insurance companies.

He also hinted that the Ghana Insurers Association and the National Insurance Commission is soon going to roll out a program to help sanitize the system of quark insurance agents and insurance companies in the act of peddling falsehood to woo clients to purchase insurance products.

He indicated that, “the challenge is mainly to do with the coming in of many insurance companies. There is a lot of competition and everybody wants to survive and the companies are using all manner of ways to get to that and it is affecting the industry adversely but the GIA and the National Insurance Commission are getting all the principals on board and I believe with the proper training all those quarks will be weeded out.”

The areas of training will equip the agents with skills of communicating to clients the philosophy and importance of insurance, how to handle complaints and the various opportunities for expanding the reach of their insurance products in their jurisdictions of operation.

By: Ghana/Ultimatefmonline.com/106.9FM/Ivan Heathcote-Fumador

The post Maiden Capacity Building Training for Insurance Agents launched in Kumasi appeared first on Ultimate FM.

Major players in the Insurance industry are positioning their front line agents to whip up knowledge and patronage of insurance products in Ghana. The initiative comes at a time the insurance penetration in Ghana remains at an unimpressive less than two percent per statistics of the National Insurance Commission (NIC). An aggressive training has been […]

The post Maiden Capacity Building Training for Insurance Agents launched in Kumasi appeared first on Ultimate FM.

Read Full Story