Tanzania: Insurance industry suffers skills shortage - expert

The insurance is currently in dire need of industry skills, a situation which calls for the skills giving institutions—particularly universities to reform their curricula and train more people.

Speaking in Dar es Salaam recently, insurance expert Christantus Makoa, said very few higher learning institutions offer insurance courses, hence this explains the prevailing shortage of graduate staff in most insurance firms.

The demand for insurance services in Tanzania, he said, was growing at a good pace, hence creating a room for more jobs.

At the moment the Tanzania Insurance Regulatory Authority (TIRA) has registered 292 insurance firm out of which 72 are insurance brokers, 193 insurance agents and 27 insurance surveyors and loss assessors.

The number of unregistered insurance firms is unknown, but the Tanzanian market is believed to be potentially big.

Makoa commended the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) and the Institute of Finance Management (IFM) which jointly launched a programme on insurance targeting rarest skills currently needed by the industry.

He said courses have come in the wake of acute shortage of indigenous people with specialised skills in insurance industry.

Actuarial experts often study trends of insurance business for a certain period, and at the end determine possibilities of future scenarios, especially the nature of risks.

Their basic business role is to ensure that management of every insurer is provided with expert advice on the value of its insurance liabilities so that it can decide on the value of those liabilities in an informed manner, he said.

"Time has come for us to reduce the shortage of skilled staff in the insurance sector by using human resources developed by our own colleges," he said.

He linked prevailing severe shortage of skilled manpower in the sector to firstly its historical background of past socialist economic policies which placed little value on insurance competition.

Subsequently, economic liberalisation has brought with it increased number of insurance companies, competitive products and services, all of which place demand on new skills and education culture.

“This is not only a challenge to the insurance sector alone, because new players in the hospitality industry such as hotel would like to employ a worker whose qualifications and standards are comparable to global benchmarks,” he added.

“Gaining knowledge on insurance products would help consumers to understand whether the policy one was buying was really what one requires,” he said.

Good knowledge helps the insurer and broker to ensure that they have explained all aspects of the policy they negotiate to the consumers, as they are duty bound to provide do so on various aspects of any policy to the buyers, he further said.

Section 61(1) of the insurance Act No 10 of 2009 states that “No person shall act in Tanzania as an insurance broker, insurance agent, loss adjuster, loss assessor, surveyor, risk manager, claims setting agent or private insurance investigator unless he is registered as such in accordance with the provisions of this part.”

The Authority cautions the public on engaging non registered insurance brokers or agents from taking any insurance cover.

“Any person carrying on insurance business of an insurance agent, broker or agent without being registered as an insurer or an insurance agent or broker, as the case may be, commits an offence and on conviction shall be liable to a fine of not less than 5m/- or imprisonment for a term not less than two years or both,” states the Insurance Act No 10 of 2009 , Section 161(1).

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN