NAICOM Blames Poor Insurance Acceptance on Inadequate Service Delivery
Ebere Nwoji
The National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) has identified inadequate service delivery as the major reason for poor insurance acceptance in Nigeria.
NAICOM said though the lingering problem has been attributed to other issues like Nigeria’s peculiar market environment, limited public awareness as well as negative public perception, poor service delivery has remained major challenge to insurance acceptance in Nigeria.
NAICOM’s Senior Manager, Human Resources Service, Kabiru Ahmed who stated this while delivering a paper on, “Service Delivery, A Panacea to an Effective and Efficient Growth in the Insurance Industry,” at the recent media conference organised by NAICOM in Uyo, Akwa Ibom state, quoted the Nigerian development plan vision 2020 as describing the Nigerian insurance sector as, “A grossly untapped opportunity” with low market penetration.
He said poor service delivery, inefficiency, corruption, slow response to service delivery and inadequate complaint handling processing of public institutions to citizens were some of the reasons government established SERVICOM.
He described SERVICOM as an acronym for service compact with all Nigerians as well as a pledge by all government institutions to deliver service to the public in a timely, fair,honest, effective and transparent manner.
“The National Insurance Commission (NAICOM), being a corporate organisation is committed to ensure full compliance with the laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and other binding International Laws, thus, developed this compendium of services rendered to serve its customers.
According to him,the NAICOM Service Charter, which is one of the provisions
of “Service Compact with all Nigerians,” is a document, which represents and expresses the Commission’s commitment towards its customers in respect to: standard of services, information dissemination, availability of choice and consultation, non discrimination and accessibility to service grievance redress mechanism courtesy and value for money and expectations of the commission from its customers.He insisted that the very low acceptance of insurance in Nigeria today was largely due to low service delivery on the part of the insurance industry
”In view of the above, the strategic initiatives for insurance market development were considered in line with the commission’s laws, mandates and responsibilities, ”he said.
He listed these mandates as ensuring prompt quality service delivery to the Commission’s internal and external stakeholders, producing, monitoring the performance and reviewing SERVICOM charter within the organisation, managing the Commissions’ customer relations policy and providing opportunities for customer feedback.
