We assist companies to comply with insurance laws – NAICOM

The National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) says it is playing its role in ensuring that insurance companies comply with the set rules and laws of the industry.

Mr Ahmad Adamu, Deputy Director, Enforcement and Compliance, NAICOM, said this in an interview with newsmen in Abuja yesterday.

“We have been of much assistance to the insurance companies to ensure that they comply because it is not just an issue of enforcement.

“As a sensible regulator, compliance means that you ensure that people are enlightened, they know the required legal expectations of them and you also assist them.

“And when you do this, those that are penalized for failure to comply will know that you have done your beat as a regulator.’’

On enlightenment, Adamu said the commission already had a document that contained all the legal requirements that would be compiled in form of a booklet.

“This will be distributed to operators and other stakeholders to ensure seamless compliance.

“We also engage managements of the companies to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion when necessary.

“If you have issues and we write to you saying that you have been penalised and you come up with your defence which seems not to be understood by us, we invite you to explain.

“We invite all the staff of the unit, we all engage in a discussion and try to understand ourselves from the proper point of view and that helps a lot.”

According to Adamu, we are guided by the provision of the law in all we do.

“We try to give all the companies fair hearing, we established an affiliate jurisdiction that will review cases in the commission.

“The affiliate jurisdiction also has what we call “supreme court Exco” made up of Technical (Insurance) heads, Accountants, Lawyers and so on,’’ he said.

He said that the effort of the commission was yielding results as the level of compliance by insurance companies had increased tremendously in the past year.

“Our compliance dashboard is showing that people are getting more circumspect in what they do because it is no longer business as usual.

“Now if you commit any offence in a department and you require regulatory approval, clearance or renewal of the licence from another department, you cannot get it.

“It has become a cycle here because no insurance firm can now by-pass any department to obtain an approval.

“This is because the department must seek and get clearance from all the directorates before such an approval is made.

“So the fact that a company knows it must need one or two things from the regulator which the regulator is not likely to grant because of its failure to comply with a certain rule elsewhere.

“This has now enhanced the level of compliance a great deal.”