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Chuks Udo Okonta
The National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) said some applications for insurance broking licence were rejected because it observed that some of the applicants have been operating illegally without its permission.
The Commissioner for Insurance, Mohammed Kari, who disclosed this to journalists in Abeokuta, said the responses obtained from the publication of the names of applicants revealed that some of them have been operating an illegal broking firms prior to the time they applied for licence.
He noted that a case in point was an applicant who has been changing his office due to illegal operations the applicant had carried out.
Kari noted that the commission is determined to sanitise the insurance business, stressing that charlatans would not be allowed to infiltrate the sector.
On brokers with lapsed licences, he said the action taken by the commission when it published the names of the affected brokers was misinterpreted, adding that the commission did not delist any broker,t but only played its regulatory duty of letting the public know the firms that do not have valid licence to operate.
“Delisting connotes cancellation of licence of operations; it connotes stopping one from doing business, unfortunately, the interpretation of our action as delisting is wrong. We did not delist anybody; neither do we cancel any licence. If you look at the publication we did, it was to tell the public that the affected brokers do not have a valid licence to continue in business because their licences have elapsed.
“However, lapsing of a licence is not the action of the commission. It is a failure of the owner of the licence to renew it. So, all the companies on that list had lapsed licences. None of them were delisted nor cancelled. It is our public responsibility to tell the consumers that these companies have no licences to do businesses. That is our responsibility which was misinterpreted as delisting or cancellation,” he said.