Business

Loss Adjusters push insurers to pay outstanding fees

The Institute of Loss Adjusters of Nigeria (ILAN) has initiated moves to address teething issues that have lingered for about 31 years.

These include out of practice scale of fees and cojoined outstanding professional fee that have remained unattended to in the past.

Early in the year, ILAN President Oladiipo Olanrewaju with his team visited the Commissioner for Insurance, Mr. Olorundare Sunday Thomas and discussed the issue of scale of fee, outstanding fee and enforcement of the revised market conduct guidelines among others, and followed it up in August 31st with a visit to Nigerian Insurers Association (NIA).

Olanrewaju told members, who expressed misgivings on the contending issues at the ILAN 41st AGM that aside from the two principal bodies, the regulator and the principal, several top CEOs of insurance companies have been engaged to booster the demand of ILAN for a scale of fee review and payment of outstanding fee that have been suffocating members in several ways.

While several suggestions were given on the approach to follow, Mr Olarenwaju advised members to focus the pressure to pay on the insurers and should attach the 2018 National Insurance Commission intervention circular to increase pressure to get paid.

Olarenwaju pointed out that when the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) circular was issued, “the insurance companies responded positively. They were actually paying the outstanding adjusters fees but after a while everything went back to the old order again.”

He noted that the reverse of the Commission plan to clear the outstanding pushed “our member companies back to the previous state”, stressing that presently, his members have in their books a lot of outstanding not paid by insurance companies.

“In our last visit to NIA the Chairman promised that they are going to address that. How far they have gone with that I don’t know. But he promised that the Association will do something,” Mr. Olanrewaju stated.

He said the NAICOM was monitoring the situation having intervened in 2018, but after default was noticed, have requested ILAN to submit the list of defaulting insurers, which would be the basis for a renewed intervention.

However, ILAN President said this request from NAICOM is being slowed to allow negotiation with NIA to settle the issues involved, a position he said was made known to NIA during the visit.

He said a lot depended on both ILAN and NIA, noting that the Association alone cannot solve it. “We will put pressure on them. We expect them to get across to their members”, he explained.

According to him the practice has become an industry issue for insurers as it cuts across all sectors exception of a few companies, which does not in any way clear all insurers from blame.

He said when the 2018 NAICOM response circular started showing signs of violation, the loss adjusters did not react immediately, but they decided to take a stand as a result of loss of businesses.

“But we discovered that our assumption was not true.

What is on ground now is for us to start mounting pressure on them and that is part of what I did when we visited NIA Chairman and we discussed all issues to this lingering challenge for loss adjusters,” Mr. Olanrewaju further stated.

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