Mr Abiola Ekundayo (photo credit: Lamin Jahateh) |
“Obvious challenges” in underwriting marine and aviation insurance
in West Africa were Monday highlighted by Abiola Ekundayo, Managing Director
and Chief Executive Officer of West Africa Reinsurance Corporation (WAICA Re).
Mr Ekundayo was speaking in Banjul, The Gambia at the start of a
weeklong (August 26-29) international training course on “advance marine and
aviation insurance” for insurers from various companies in West Africa.
“We know there are challenges in these fields in the sense that we
do not have many marine and aviation underwriters,” he said at the training
organised by WAICA-Re, a sub-regional reinsurance company based in Freetown,
Sierra Leone.
“Also, if you look at the insurance industry in Africa generally,
the old people are going out and the younger ones they are leaving are not well
versatile when it comes to underwriting skills, particularly marine and
aviation insurance,” Ekundayo told about 50 participants from various insurance
companies namely Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
So we are trying to develop them, the younger ones, in order to
prepare them for the future so that the industry will not collapse even if all
the old ones retire, he said.
Paritcipants (photo credit: Lamin Jahateh) |
Declared open by a representative of the Governor of the Central
Bank of The Gambia, Amadou Colley, the training will cover modules such as
marine cargo underwriting, marine cargo and hull reinsurance, aviation
insurance underwriting, and aviation insurance claims and adjustments.
WAICA Re hopes that at the end of the training the participants
will also be versatile in underwriting the two classes of insurance – marine
and aviation.
In 2012, WAICA Re organised a similar course on ‘the principles
and practice of reinsurance’ in Freetown - part of its objective of building
the capacities, the skills of companies that cede business to them, to develop
the companies for the future.
Owned by the 5 English speaking countries in West Africa, WAICA Re
started operations in August 2011.
Its main objective is to provide reinsurance services to the
insurance companies in the sub-regional economic bloc, ECOWAS, and Middle East
and some parts of Asia. It also has offices in Nigeria and Ghana.
Written by Modou S. Joof
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