The Institute plans to sign partnership agreements with the national Insurance Institute of India.
IIU’s Chairman governing council Ronald Zaake (Right) talks to Mark Twinamukye and Michael Bartlett of Bartlett Africa Ltd as IIU’s Chief Executive Officer Elvis Khisa (Left) looks on.(Picture by Benjamin Ssebaggala)
The Insurance Institute of Uganda (IIU) is in the process of forming partnerships with counterparts across the globe, a move aimed at helping the local body build technical capacity as it executes its mandate of developing the industry human resource momentum and ensure employees attain world class competitive job requirements.
The partnerships are also intended to broaden IIU’s knowledge in the area of training, given that Uganda’s insurance industry has for long been served by employees that did not study broadly about insurance while offering different business courses available at different local tertiary institutions.
According to the IIU chairman governing council Ronald Zaake, the Institute plans to sign partnership agreements with the national Insurance Institute of India and the Chartered Insurance Institute of the United Kingdom and New Zealand.
The development follows a recent breakthrough when IIU signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Insurance Institute of South Africa (IISA) where the later agreed to help in developing Uganda’s insurance professional career through provision of modern training and teaching support materials.
“Our teams visited and signed MOUs with insurance institutes in developed economies like the Insurance Institute of South Africa and plans are underway to do the same with Institutes of UK, India New Zealand, among others,” he said
Zaake was briefing chief executive officers of local insurance firms about IIU’s progress report during a breakfast forum organised by IIU at Hotel Africana recently. The meeting was intended to brainstorm about the way forward in developing a local strong insurance sector.
The globally known institutes will help IIU in developing specific insurance course modules relevant in the courses locally offered, including Certificate in Insurance, Certificate of Proficiency and Diploma in Insurance and the working relationship will help IIU as it seeks to widely embrace the digital age while training.
The plans to develop the local insurance industry human resource are viewed by local players as one of the critical areas of focus in growing the industry and attract public confidence in taking up various insurance policies.
Local insurance players attach great importance to career development through regular training to the extent that they finance the operations of IIU with a 0.5% mandatory training levy charged on premium sold by each insurance firm.
Partnering with crossboader teaching bodies will open windows for Uganda’s industry to learn the management systems that has helped insurance sectors elsewhere in the world to deepen penetration. South Africa’s insurance penetration rate is for example at 15.4%, far above the continent’s average rate of 3.65%, yet Uganda’s insurance industry worth sh611b commands a penetration rate of 0.86%, according to the 2015 Global Insurance Report.
IIU was established in 1964 as a non-profit training body of the insurance industry with intentions of raising professional knowledge, skills and assist in career development among members engaged in insurance in the East African region and beyond.
The need to attract small businesses
The executive director Private Sector Foundation Uganda Gideon Badagawa advised insurance players to develop and promote products for small and medium enterprises, given that businesses under that category need insurance more than the large scale companies since the former can hardly get back into business in case of big risks that go uncompensated.
Vision Reporter
