The Ghana Insurers Association (GIA) has commenced a 2-day awareness creation training for insurance practitioners from all licensed insurance companies in the country.

Dubbed the ‘2023 Annual Insurance Seminar’, the two-day seminar which is taking place in Accra will provide participants with a platform to learn, unlearn and relearn ways to address new trends in the global insurance space. This is with the view to boosting international best practices so as to keep the local industry’s head above water.

The seminar is being attended by over 160 participants as part of activities to climax this year’s Insurance Awareness Month celebration.

The seminar, which is being sponsored by the Africa Reinsurance Consultants and MultiThread is meant to educate the public and highlight the importance of insurance with industry players at the starting point.

The President of GIA, Seth Kobla Aklasi, in his opening remarks urged insurance companies to intensify education on insurance to reach more people and get the public to understand and appreciate the benefits of insurance.

“Deepening public education on insurance will encourage more people and companies to sign on to insurance,” he stated.

That, he said, would help insurance companies to build on their premium income generation to be able to pay genuine claims.

Mr Aklasi observed that investment income was dwindling for the insurance companies due to the difficult macroeconomic conditions and the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP).

According to him, insurance companies needed to work harder to diversify their income sources to shore up their revenues.

“Because we are in difficult times we cannot rely on investment alone; we need to begin to bring out the business aspect of insurance to stay profitable,” he said.

In view of this, he said the insurance companies must work harder to attract more customers to earn more premiums to sustain the business and remain profitable to generate value for shareholders.

Mr Aklasi further said the changing dynamics in the insurance industry had created the need for the players to be on top of the business and improve their underwriting skills.

According to him, players in the insurance industry needed the right skills to better access their risks and price better to meet the growing cost of operating an insurance business.

“Times are a bit different these days. We need to begin to do things differently as an Industry hence the need to train the people in the Industry to be able to rise up to the occasion,” the President of GIA, said.

Mr Aklasi said apart from motor insurance which formed a significant portion of business for non-life insurance companies, the participants will be taken through marine insurance and reinsurance.

He said the seminar would focus on Information Communication Technology (ICT) because the world was going digital, hence the need for insurance companies to deploy digital technology to reach out to every corner shop of the country.

In spite of the effect of the government’s Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP) on investment incomes, the President of the GIA said insurance companies were in a strong financial position to meet all their claim obligations in real-time.