Race for NIC boss begins

At exactly 5pm today, the current Commissioner of Insurance Mrs. Nyamikeh Kyiamah will bow out of office after gracefully occupying the office for four years, leaving a very successful insurance career spanning over two decades of unblemished contribution to growth of the Industry.

Already the rumour-mill has been set in motion, with names of some well-known practitioners coming up as possible successors.

B&FT has gathered that two names are being seriously considered by government for possible appointment: the two front runners are Mr. Mahama E. Baba and Mr. Larry Jiagge.

As a chartered accountant Mr. Baba has a wealth of experience in the industry, having been the Managing Director of Vangaurd Assurance for years before he eventually went on retirement recently.

He has sat on a number of Committees and Boards, including presently the Board of the NIC and Vanguard, and is a former Board Chairman of the Graphic Communications Group and a former president of the Ghana Insurers Association.

Mr. Jiagge, a former M/D of CDH Insurance Company presently known as NSIA, now runs a successful broking company.

A respected professional in the market, in his mid-fifties, he is a lawyer by training with a deep knowledge of regulatory laws governing insurance practice in Ghana, including even national health insurance, and national pensions and regulations and the Ecowas Brown Card-enabling law in Ghana,

He has sat also on various market committees and Boards, and is presently the Board- chair of an Insurance company, a Rural Bank and a Micro-finance company.

He was once the Chairman of Brown Card (Ghana) and Council Chair for the Council of Bureau for the whole of West Africa, where he gained a reputation for turning around the fortunes of the Regional body in 2009.

He has the reputation of having turned around the fortunes of the then-DH Insurance Company Ltd. from a non-licenced Insurance Company to a profitable one in two years.

There are divergent views as to who should be Commissioner. From our investigations, the more senior members of the Industry want Mr. Baba as their preferred candidate while the younger Chief Executives and Senior Managers prefer Mr. Jiagge.

However, some though not doubting his vast legal knowledge of the various Laws wonder whether his brash approach to getting things done will not work against him.

The insurance industry has had its fair share of challenges including huge premium receivables, non-performing companies, and poor policing of the provisions in various regulatory laws.

A World Bank report issued in February last year described some insurance companies in the country as inefficient.

Currently, there are over 45 licenced insurance companies in the country.

Because of the nature of risks associated with insurance business, the NIC said every company is required to have a minimum capital of US$5million by December, 2012.

However, some of the companies have failed to comply.

Industry players are looking forward to a new Commissioner who will bring more sanity into the industry, and also ensure compliance issues are promptly dealt with.

Another issue of concern in bringing efficiency into the industry is that of financial reporting. The new Commissioner must ensure, also, that the companies adopt the new internationally prescribed accounting reporting standards, these being the International Financial Reporting standards (IFRS).