Take insurance seriously – Nundwe

Copperbelt Province Permanent Secretary, Bright Nundwe has called on residents in the province to take matters of insurance very keenly.

ZANIS reports that Mr. Nundwe said he has noted with great concern that a lot of Zambians have not paid attention to issues of insurance to ensure that their assets and lives are insured.

Mr. Nundwe said the significance of insurance should not be downplayed in any way and as it plays a very significant role in bringing those befallen with calamities.

Mr. Nundwe has as well implored state owned insurance companies to be more vibrant and be able to respond to the growing competition on the market.

Mr. Nundwe said today in Ndola when ZSIC General Insurance Director, Charles Nakhoze called on him at his office that government will always endeavour to ensure that maximum support is rendered to state owned institutions, particularly insurance companies.

“Something has to be done to enable state owned institutions like yours to thrive and adequately respond to the unmatched competition on the market,” Mr. Nundwe said.

And speaking earlier, Mr. Nakhoze said ZSIC General Insurance has in the past two business years of 2019 and 2020 witnessed an increase in premiums.

Mr. Nakhoze said a 35 percent profit increment was witnessed between the two business years and has attributed this to the increase in motor vehicle business and participation in the Farmers Input Support Programme (FISP).

The ZSIC General Managing Director described 2020 as a good business year despite the outbreak of COVID-19 adding that the impact was not felt immediately because the company did most of its renewals in the first quarter of 2020.

“Our premiums grew by about 34 percent between 2019 and 2020 from K254.7 million in 2019 to 372.9 million in 2020 and these figures are yet to be audited.

From this we expect to produce a profit of not less than K35 million for the year 2020, the figures may vary depending on what the auditor say but we do not expect that the variation will be more than 20 percent,” he said.

He added that the coming on board of the Industrial Development Committee – IDC has helped the firm and has enabled it to pay retirees and claims.

Mr. Nakhoze said the IDC has enabled ZSIC to operate as a commercial entity and note a government institution.

“Another thing that has helped us to improve our outreached has been we invested in core business software called ‘Info Ins’ where we spent about K13, million purely to ensure that we improve the relationship between us and the clients,” Mr. Nakhoze said.