ZEP-Reinsurance (ZEP-RE) in collaboration with the College of Insurance has launched a training Academy to train local and regional insurance executives on the technical aspects of reinsurance management.
According to ZEP-RE CEO Rajni Varia, the Academy has been mainly set up to address an existing skills gap for reinsurance practitioners. The training programme, Varia said, has been designed to provide contemporary skills and technical know how for insurance executives pursuing a career in reinsurance services.
The CEO also hopes the Academy will also play a key role in facilitating efforts to raise the local insurance penetration rates under the new Risk Based Supervision (RBS) regulatory regime.
“Though the fundamentals of the insurance and reinsurance industry remain the same, the landscape is ever changing, with new risks that hitherto were not prevalent. Terrorism risk for instance has become an ever-present risk and therefore, we as an industry have to find ways of mitigating this risk for our clients,” said Varia.
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Officiating at the launch, the Commissioner of Insurance Sammy Makove said there is a need to enhance insurance training as part of the insurance penetration enhancing roadmap.
“Insurance penetration in Comesa and indeed the rest of Africa is far less than satisfactory with the exception of a few countries. We need to change this if the industry is to find traction,” said Makove.
Kenya’s insurance penetration stands at 2.8 percent while Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania stands 1.6 percent, 1 percent and 0.7 percent respectively.
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He added that mobile telephony had changed the way we do business, including how insurance is delivered to the customer.
“In the modern era where the population is more educated, and technology penetration is deepening because of the consistent increase in the number of mobile phones and the reach of cell phone networks, it behooves insurance personnel to increase their knowledge of their products and indeed, share that knowledge with the public.”
The Academy will conduct some classes at ZEP-RE offices in Upper Hill, others at the College of Insurance and in the regional markets that the reinsurance company operates in.
