Chartered Insurance Institute to Conduct Internal Exams for Members

The Chartered Insurance Institute of Ghana (CIIG) has hinted of plans to conduct internal examinations for its members as part of the rebranding effort to become self-autonomous.

Speaking to ModernGhana on the sidelines of a Health Walk organized by the CIIG in Accra, the Public Relations Officer of CIIG, Mr. Kofi Okoampah Akoto said the institute has been under the supervision of the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) of the UK for the past decade.

He added that examinations are being organized externally for their members by their UK affiliate based on the UK standard until recently they realized the need to examine themselves internally as more professionals were concerned.

“Currently what we do here is training our students and they write their exams externally. We started with the Ghana Insurance College (GIC) in collaboration with the Malta International Insurance Training Centre (MIITC) who had accreditation from the CII UK to conduct exams, but now we have moved away from the MIITC and dealing with the CII UK to have direct affiliation,” Mr. Akoto stated.

According to him, plans are far advanced to attain a chartership for the institute to enable it conduct and award its own local charter by 2019 after the draft bill has been submitted for Parliamentary approval.

“The GIC has already drafted the Ghana Syllabus which is under review by the CII UK. Once everything goes through we will start,” he intimated.

He noted that the change will not affect the existing relationship between the CII UK and the CIIG.

Mr. Akoto added that the aim of the institute is to maintain a central body of knowledge and develop and sustain relationships with local and international insurance institutes and industry bodies.

He indicated that the CIIG which was formerly the Insurance Institute of Ghana in the 1960s attain its currently name in 2017.

“So we are rebranding from the Insurance Institute of Ghana to the Chartered Insurance Institute of Ghana now and once we obtain our royal charter we will bring together all the allied bodies together under our umbrella,” Mr. Akoto stated.

According to him, the Council wants to make CIIG stronger and more relevant through membership drive by increasing the enrollment to 1000 in 2019.

He stressed that the institute which has over 500 qualified members of which 30 are fellows are made up of corporate subscribers and individual professional members with about 120 student members.

“We want to bring together chartered insurers in the health insurance companies who are not members to drive the excellence in the insurance industry,” Mr. Akoto posited.

To ensure the integrity of insurance management in the country, he posited that the institute is building strong membership base with four reinsurance companies, over 40 non-life companies and 37 life insurance companies.

“We have over 87 insurance brokers with the regulator being part of us. With all these together as a CIIG, we are promising the public that we are ever ready to handle any financial risk in the country,” Mr. Akoto has said.

He expressed worry about the apathy in the financial institutions indicating that the main aim of the institute is to increase the confidence of the people in the insurance market by building a strong, resilient and reliable insurance industry that truly serves.

Mr. Akoto emphasized that with the current reforms in the sector, the National Insurance Commission (NIC) is raising the recapitalization of some of the insurance companies to improve on claims payments which has become a major challenge in the insurance sector.

This effort, he said, according to the Commission is to increase insurance penetration from 2percent to 6percent in 2020.