The Managing Director of Unique Insurance, Mr. Victor Obeng-Adiyiah, who made the commitment at a ceremony to award the company’s best-performing insurance agents during the 2016 financial year, said the company considers the agents as a vehicle through which its products get to customers thereby playing a key role in the tremendous growth of the business.

The company’s best performing agents drawn from the southern and northern sectors of the country numbering over 20 were rewarded for their hard work and meeting their target for 2016.

Mr. Alex H. Sackyefio from Kumasi, came top and was rewarded with a trip to Dubai, followed by Mrs. Selina Adjei Gyan of Takoradi who will have a weekend treat at Aqua Safari in Ada, Ms. Daphne Acquah of Accra took the third position. The rest received various items from the company in recognition of their performance.

The insurance company also honoured its best employees for 2016.  Francis Kwamena Sey, Marketing officer, Takoradi branch was adjudged the best staff, Mr. Francis Antwi, Reinsurance Officer at head office came in second and Hawawu Ikililu Awudu from the Tema Branch was third.

Mr. Obeng-Adiyiah said Unique Insurance rewarded them, as a sign of appreciation to the contributions of agents, assuring that the company would continue to invest in training and equipping of agents to enable them enhance their performance.

He said the company will soon institute an end of service benefit for them, to enable them have some form of pension when they leave the business and charged them not to rest on their oars but to broaden their horizon in order to improve upon their performance.

Outlook

On the outlook for the company this year, the Managing Director said, “We are going to consolidate and grow our business through new business acquisition and increased business retention.

“From a dive in our premium over the last five years, we ended the year with a growth of 42 per cent and we hope to hit an additional 38 per cent by the end of 2017,” he said.

Mr. Obeng-Adiyiah said the company would further enhance its customer service delivery and also repackage some of its products to meet the changing needs of customers.

The company, he said, has mapped out a strategy to increase its presence across the country by the end of 2017.

Challenges

Commenting on the challenges that confronted the company last year, he cited lack of appreciation of insurance policies by Ghanaians, the economic situation, making it difficult for people to increase or buy insurance policies during the year under review and lack of legal enforcement on mandatory insurance policies as issues that confronted the industry.

Mr. Obeng-Adiyiah also cited premium undercutting as one other challenge confronting the industry, adding that the practice was having a negative impact on the growth of the industry.

Premium undercutting is the practice where an insurance company secretly offers clients unrealistically low premiums in order to gain a competitive advantage, a practice he described as unethical and must be stopped to ensure sanity in the industry.

He said the motive of engagement is usually to increase the business portfolio, but this invariably depletes the insurer’s reserves.