The Nigerian Insurers Association (NIA) has reiterated the commitment of the association’s members to comply and pay outstanding fees owed to members of the Institute of Loss Adjusters of Nigeria (ILAN).
Chairman of NIA, Kunle Ahmed, made the pledge as a guest of the ILAN at the institute’s 42nd Annual General Meeting held at ILAN House, Surulere, Lagos, where he addressed the recurring issue of outstanding fees for claims already adjusted and paid to claimants.
The seriousness attached to the matter led to his skipping momentarily of the scheduled paper, ‘Strengthening Collaboration between Insurers and Loss Adjusters for the Growth of the Insurance Industry,’ and in its place focused on the strain in the collaboration.
Ahmed told the loss adjusters that the NIA would start by engaging in a conversation with each one of its members involved to put the issue of outstanding fees at rest by endorsing payments to Loss Adjusters.
He said: “If need be, NIA will write officially to those companies if that is required. But I can assure you that I will be paying a lot of attention to that particular issue because if I don’t pay particular attention to that particular issue you might not be able to do everything in the course of assisting us in settling claims.”
The NIA’s intervention is coming six years after the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) 2018 circular on ‘Inter Company Balances and Payment of Loss Adjusters Fee,’ where it demanded that underwriters shall settle their portion of a Loss Adjusters fee not later than 10 days after the submission of the adjuster’s report to the underwriter(s.) Where a lead underwriter pays the fee on behalf of the other co-insurers, the co-insurers shall reimburse the lead their respective proportion of the fee within five working days of the settlement of the adjuster by the lead underwriter.”
The transition arrangement was that “All underwriters are by this circular required to settle all outstanding Loss Adjusters fees, claims dues to lead underwriters/cedants arising from coinsurance, facultative and reinsurance transactions within 30 days from the date of this circular,” he said.
The NIA chairman also wants adjusters to be forward-looking and evolve with the changing work patterns dictated by advances in technology, especially generative AI, besides the issue of outstanding fees to Loss Adjusters.
“I want to employ you as Loss Adjusters to look for ways of improving loss adjusting because if you don’t do it new start-ups will begin to position themselves to offer pre-loss surveys and other services and all of a sudden you will not see those jobs being done by Loss Adjusters anymore and we don’t want that to happen,” he said.
Ahmed stated that it would be difficult to erase the human factor though, but there was an urgent need to address enhancement in several areas of the job by deploying some aspects of new tech developments.
The ILAN President, Diipo Olarenwaju, in his response, said there was a need for Loss Adjusters and their principals, the insurers, to feel each other’s pulse by closing the gap because “we are far apart from each other.”
He noted that the future of the insurance industry belongs “to every one of us. We need you desperately. I am using the word ‘desperately’ because of other things involved and you too need us. We believe that during your time all issues including the review of the 32-year scale of fees will be brought up and addressed.”
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