Insurance firms are cheats. There, I said it. Maybe on behalf of many or just for myself. But my experience with that sector has left a bitter taste in my mouth. Of course, for the record, I have seen insurance do some good things. And pay on time, especially the higher up you go.
Maybe it’s just me but the statistics speak for themselves. Insurance may lament that it has a perception problem, but the truth is it has a problem. At less than five per cent, insurance in Kenya is really not worth writing home about.
If you remove the government-mandated insurance, the numbers are really pathetic. We can shoot the messenger or hopefully we can sit up and listen (and change). Insurers are the top abusers of buyer power in Kenya. As in simply refuse to pay, because they can. Cofek has protested numerously that insurers exist to collect premiums not offer value.
In school we learnt that one of the pillars of insurance is utmost good faith. It’s expected of customers but rarely practised by the insurers. They will look for a loophole to weasel out of paying what is rightfully due. Fine print must have been made with insurers in mind.
They say what goes round comes round. Fraudulent claims are rampant in the industry, leading to losses. Most are perpetrated by insiders and collusion. Those who can’t steal keep off, hence, the low insurance uptake in Kenya.
We can leave them to their game and say I told you so. Or listen to their salespeople. We will nod ourselves to sleep team as you go ngwe ngwe ngwe (no offence). But insurance has so much to offer if only it started with a clean heart or in good faith.
For instance the transport industry. We have lost more than 2,200 lives this year alone. Yet insurance is stamped all over—motor vehicle, pedestrians, medical and even to the grave. If insurance could rightly flex its muscles, our travel would be a much safer experience.
Or the agriculture sector. I'm sure it makes up over 70 per cent of the rural economy, full of hard-working Kenyans. What if insurance provided the right support not just to the farmer but the entire pipeline? This is a low-hanging fruit whose benefits would span across the entire chain for decades to come. And so on and so forth.
Like the Hebrew writer of old, time would fail us if we were to tell of all the opportunities that abound once insurance puts its best foot forward. Until then as the adage goes, insurance remains part of the problem, not the solution.
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