By Favour Nnabugwu
INSURANCE industry is continuing to struggle with adverse image as it recorded lowest customer complaints redress amongst other sectors in 2016 at the Consumer Protection Council, CPC.
Insurance Consumers’ Association of Nigeria (INSCAN), a body established with the objective to protect the general interest of the insurance consumers in Nigeria among other objectives, is pushing for a more excellent service delivery industry.
Director-general of CPC, Mrs Dupe Atoki who presented the Councils 2016 report in Lagos penultimate Wednesday, said the sector that recorded the least of redress was insurance and pension.
Financial services
Giving an highlight of complaints so far received by the Council, she stated: “A total number of consumer complaints received in the various sectors was 5,000; total number of complaints resolved was 4,000.”
She added that the sector that received the highest redress was financial services and the sector that received the least redress was insurance and pensions.”
President of INSCAN, Mr Yemi Soladoye said the body had done a lot to ensure that the policy wordings of insurance companies are clear and unambiguous to customers to understand.
Soladoye stated: “We demanded for a transparent and reader friendly contract wordings. Your policy documents, being the evidence of the contract with us is full of discouraging and frustrating technical jargons that hardly would anybody read more than one page of the ‘hand out’ which at times goes up to 30 pages before dropping same.
“We therefore make it categorically clear that we are tired of these intimidating words and expect all insurance companies in Nigeria to adapt their policy documents to the modern trends where the policy document starts with “meaning of words”, followed by “what is covered”, what is not covered and then the conditions guiding the contract with a claim form tucked into the folder at the back of the policy jacket.”
The challenges that had in the past caused a lot of complaints to erupt in the sector, Soladoye added, include delay in payment of insurance claims, fake insurance policies and poor computation of claims amongst others.
Soladoye who believe things will get better between insurance consumers and underwriting companies, noted that people are beginning to understand issues that hitherto cause confusion and complaints.
Vanguard
