Ebere Nwoji
The National Insurance Commission (NAICOM), has approved the financial reports of 32 out of the existing 59 insurance and reinsurance firms in the country.
The commission, in a statement titled ‘Status of 2016 Financial Statements of Insurance Companies as at June 13th, 2017 gave the names of the approved firms as FBN General Insurance, Wapic Life Insurance, Ensure Insurance, Continental Reinsurance, Zenith General Insurance, FBN Insurance, Zenith Life Assurance and Consolidated Hall Mark Assurance.
Others are Custodian and Allied, Custodial Life, Law Union and Rock, Wapic General, AIICO Insurance, AXA Mansard, Prestige Assurance, Nem Insurance, Regency Insurance and LASACO Assurance Plc.
Also approved by the commission were the reports of the following Companies ‘UnityKapital Assurance, Cornerstone Insurance, Fin Insurance Royal Exchange General, Leadway Assurance Plc, Old Mutual General Insurance Plc, Staco Assurance, Mutual Benefit Life Assurance, Sovereign Trust Insurance, NSIA Insurance, Standard Alliance Life, Mutual Benefit Assurance Plc, Old Mutual Life Assurance,
The accounts of these companies have been approved.
NAICOM, however, did not approve the accounts of the following nine insurance firms that have submitted their accounts statements.
They include Guinea insurance, whose account was queried by the commission, ARM Life whose account is still undergoing review, Niger Insurance, still at review stage, Nigerian Reinsurance corporation, whose report was queried, United Metropolitan Nigerian Life report also queried, Standard Alliance General Insurance, report also queried, Linkage Assurance, review in process, sterling Assurance and KBL Insurance whose reports are under review in process stage. The firms are required to present their accounts accounting to international Finance Reporting requirements.
The insurance sector, fully adopted the International Finance Reporting Standard (IFRS) system of accounts presentation barely three years ago.
Since then, preparing and presenting their annual financial accounts has always been a big challenge to the industry operators, this is despite series of training given to them by the regulator, Some firms still find it difficult to get their accounts easily approved by the Commission due to poor presentation.
At the initial stage, many firms paid heavy fine to their regulators due to late filing of their reports.
But presently, there have been tremendous improvement on this in the past two year as more and more insurance firms are getting used to the system.
Insurance firms have June 30th deadline to file their annual reports, failure to meet this attracts a daily fine of N5000 until such firms file and get their report approved by the regulator.
