NIA moves against ‘insurance packages’ offer by states

Chuks Udo Okonta

The Nigerian Insurers Association (NIA) has challenged the issuance of mandatory motor vehicle insurance package offered by states’ licensing offices across the country.

It was learnt that States’ licensing offices do compelled vehicle owners, against their wishes to buy insurance covers packaged together with other documents.

The Director-General NIA, Sunday Thomas, who said he has been a victim noted that the association has had meetings with the officers of the states’ licensing departments to put to a stop to the abnormally.

While narrating his ordeal with one of the licensing offices, he noted that he was compelled to pay for an insurance cover having bought a comprehensive policy for his vehicle.

He noted that the sale of ‘packaged insurance’ at licensing offices is inimical to insurance industry, adding that the proliferation of fake vehicle policies is the handiwork of racketeers at licensing offices.

According to a report, over N150 billion is loss by the insurance industry yearly, to fake vehicle policies issued by racketeers.

Investigation revealed that out of the over 12.5 million vehicles on the nation's roads, only I.5 million have genuine insurance particulars, which are either comprehensive which is sold at 10 per cent of the worth of the vehicle or third party which is sold at N5, 000.  

The NIA Director-General, said about 1.5 million vehicle policies have so far been uploaded on the industry's database which was designed to capture the data of all insured vehicles in the country.

He said: "So far close to 1.5 million vehicles have been uploaded, which is still a far cry from our expectations. Our target is to upload all the vehicles in the country.

"One of the major objectives of the Nigerian Insurance Industry Database (NIID) is able to capture the data of transactions within the market. In the past, this has been very difficult to get. We had people bouncing different figures all around, we want to put an end to that, and we need some time to do that.

"We will continue to update the record. There has not been any structured policy in the past, to get figures of numbers of vehicles. We only transact in terms of the financial reports not the typical present of number of vehicles. We are looking to a situation where we would be able to say this is the number of lives and vehicles insured in Nigeria.

"If you ask me today about the number of insured vehicles in the country, I would tell you that they are about 1.5 million, because that is what I can account for and have on my system."