Insurance operators to advertise unclaimed claims

The National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) and Insurance operators have decided  to publish all outstanding claims in Nigerian newspapers.

This development came to light during a press briefing after the 14th Insurers’ Committee meeting held in Lagos while the Head of Corporate Communications and Market Development at NAICOM, Rasaaq Salami, announced that as part of efforts to deepen insurance penetration, insurance companies will advertise outstanding claims to policyholders who are yet to claim their benefits.

This, he said, will facilitate the payment of the claims and raise public confidence in the insurance industry.

Salami noted that the Committee also reached a consensus to standardise the documents required for claims to eliminate delays and long-outstanding claims while making the process seamless.

According to him, the practice of looking into outstanding claims has been in the market, where life operators check burial publications in newspapers to see if the deceased has a policy with them and further call the family members of the deceased to be informed about the policy and to claim their benefits.

He stressed that the practice will be taken further where every underwriter can now publish outstanding claims encouraging the policyholders to come forward for their entitlement.

“It will help the industry to show that we are actually paying claims and this will also have the multiplying effect of having more people’s trust and confidence to take up more insurance.”

Salami noted that NAICOM has also urged operators to develop strategies to enhance customer relationships and improve value creation, enabling the retention and creation of new customers.

Additionally, underwriters are being encouraged to upload their claims from the onset to settlement stage to enable the Commission to get full information on claims.