Business News of Monday, 19 July 2021
Source: www.ghanaweb.live
2021-07-1925% of insurance claims made through fraudulent means - NIC boss
Dr Justice Yaw Ofori, NIC Commissioner
• More than 25% of insurance claims in Ghana are fraudulent
• This was revealed by the Commissioner OF Insurance, Dr. Justice Yaw Ofori
• The NIC has assured it is working to put an end to the situation
The National Insurance Commission (NIC) has disclosed that about 25 percent of insurance
Read full articleclaims made in Ghana are fraudulent.
According to the Commissioner of Insurance, Dr. Justice Ofori, while 40 percent of claims are fake globally, the country is dealing with over 20 percent fraudulent claims which include inflating claims, staging claims, and sometimes people staging their death to make a life claim.
“Basically worldwide, of all claims reported, 40 percent are fraudulent. That is one of the reasons why insurance claims need a lot of investigation. It also affects the premium people pay, because so far as there are leakages it results in a high premium for consumers worldwide. I don’t have the specifics, but in Ghana, we should be looking at about 25 percent fraudulent claims. It could be inflating claims, staging claims, and sometimes people staging their death to make a life claim,” he noted.
The NIC boss in an interaction with journalists on Saturday, July 17, 2021, shared the 2019 Annual Report of his outfit which showed that on an average, daily claims incurred by the Non-Life Insurers in Ghana stood at GH¢1.4 million.
Dr Ofori explained that although insurance companies are faced with extra costs as a result of fraudulent activities, consumers are also financially impacted and forced to pay higher premiums.
He therefore charged insurance companies to do due diligence before any claims payment as it is one of the ways of curbing the rise in fraudulent cases.
“It is the responsibility of insurance companies to do due diligence before embarking on any claims payment. Claims investigations are very important to actually weed out such fraudulent instances. So it is the responsibility of the insurance companies who have to pay these claims to investigate to ensure that they are paying only legitimate claims.”
Meanwhile, a recent research on public perception, awareness and confidence of insurance in Ghana, has indicated that people make fraudulent claims due to a poor database of policyholders and their activities, a problem the NIC says is working to resolve with an upcoming digital claims database.
