The National Insurance Commission has challenged stakeholders in the insurance sector to enforce discipline and promote professional integrity, to enable the industry grow in line with international best practice.
The regulator is particularly worried that professional associations have not taken seriously, the issue of ethics, which often allows sharp practices by operators, thus causing more image crises in the sector.
The Commissioner for Insurance, Mohammed Kari, who spoke at the 2017 professional forum of the Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria, charged the leadership of the Institute to reinvent itself as a professional body and update its curriculum to either adopt or adapt contemporary best practices for the overall benefit of the profession.
Kari, therefore, implored the new President of the institute to treat the issue as priority in her agenda, while noting that when this, alongside other steps are taken, it will engender respect and credibility for the Institute and the insurance industry at large.
He urged the institute to ensure members uphold the ethics of the profession, adding, “Posterity will not judge us right if we depart this career without leaving a positive and lasting impact on what had sustained us this far.”
Continuing, Kari said, “By a simple exercise, we can ask ourselves how many of these CIIN certified and qualified members have exhibited and sustained the spirit of the profession.
“How many of us conduct our business in line with the ethics, standards and principles that guide the practice of an insurance professional? The conduct of some of our professionals in the market is, to say the least, appalling and I want to urge the Institute to take a critical look at this development with a view to coming up with measures to arrest it.
“We look forward to a day when a professional will be de-certified by the Institute for unprofessional conduct. Cases are abounding around us in other professions where the privileges of a practitioner are withdrawn for some unacceptable act in his calling.
“So I call on the Institute to review its Code of Conduct for members in order to be in tune with the current international best practice. There is obvious need to enforce discipline in the system and there cannot be a better a place to start than from the members of the Institute.
” In the spirit of self-regulation, the Commission therefore demands that the Institute gives an accelerated attention and incept the process of reviewing and enforcing the Code of Conduct for members, failure of which we would be left with no option but to enforce it as contained in the law.”
He expressed concern over the recent report released by Nigeria Insurers Association that Nigeria was being deprived of billions of Naira due to “dearth of professionals in marine insurance in the country, which has paved the way for unethical practices in this class of insurance
business.”
