By ROSEMARY ONUOHA

The National Insurance Commission, NAICOM, said it is now set to enforce the five compulsory insurances under the Market Development and Restructuring Initiative, MDRI, in September.

According to NAICOM, the MDRI Steering committee which is made up of CEOs of insurance companies met in Lagos recently to strategise on how best to implement and enforce the MDRI.

The five products are the Third Party Motor Insurance (Section 68 of Insurance Act, 2003); Builders Liability (Section 64 of Insurance Act, 2003); and the Occupiers’ Liability (Section 65 of Insurance Act, 2003).

Others are Health Care Professional Indemnity of Section 45 of the Nigerian Health Insurance Scheme, 1995 and the statutory group life of Section 3(2) and Section 9(3) of the Pension Reform Act, 2004.

Alhaji Adamu Balanti, Director, Research, Statistics and Information Technology (R,S&IT) of NAICOM who opened deliberations at the meeting also informed members that the recent raids in VIO offices in Abuja would be a continuous exercise.

Consultant on the MDRI project, Chief Yemi Soladoye, took the committee through the various stages the programme has gone through so far and said that eventually, the programme would be domiciled in the industry.

Members wanted to know if domiciling it in the industry would mean the Commission complete hands off of the programme.

Their fear was that if they are to go about enforcing the programme, it could cause them their prospective clients. Soladoye assured them that the Commission would still be very much involved.

However, the Consultant reiterated the fact that the MDRI project is an industry affair.

Balanti told members that the enforcement teams would be trained all over the country before the enforcement exercise proper and this would be done between August and September when the enforcement is expected to commence fully.

However, to be able to make a good meaning out of the programme, he said agents would be a veritable medium for reaching the expected target.

Soladoye said for underwriters to be able to train and retain the agents for reasonable productivity, steps should be taken to ensure that agents are treated as part of the company and not some outsiders who have no career in the company.

He said, there is nothing wrong in an agent rising to become executive director or even CEO of an underwriting firm.

He believes if agents are treated this way and they know they have a future in the company, not only would they want to stay put, staff in other departments would be wanting to convert to agents instead of the current situation where agents plead to be converted to full time staff.

The Deputy Director, Authorisation and Policy (A&P), Mr. Leo Akah, told the committee that the Commission was doing all it could to encourage the agency system.

He said, part of that strategy is the reduction of the registration fee for agents from N15,000 to N1,000. He hopes that the Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria (CIIN) would do the same to promote the agency business in the industry.