Ebere Nwoji
The National Insurance Commission (NAICOM), has approval the accounts of seven more firms, bringing to 39, the number of insurance and reinsurance firms whose accounts have been approved by the commission for the 2016 financial year.
NAICOM recently released the list of 32 insurance and reinsurance firms whose accounts and financial reports crossed the hurdle of its approval.
The seven firms whose accounts were approved by the commission last week included ARM Life insurance, Linkage Assurance, Sterling Assurance, Standard Alliance General Insurance, Anchor Insurance, Niger Insurance, and United Metropolitan Nigeria Life Insurance Ltd.
The 32 insurance and reinsurance firms, whose accounts were approved last month were FBNGeneral 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 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 were last month approved by the commission.
In its latest statement on the operating firms’ account issue NAICOM, indicated that out of 49 firms that had submitted their accounts, it is yet to approve the accounts of ten firms.
They include; Guinea Insurance Plc, whose account was placed on Response under review status, Nigeria Reinsurance Corporation, whose account was queried, KBL Insurance Ltd, whose account was also queried, African Alliance, whose account is still under review, Nigerian Agricultural Insurance Corporation, whose account is on Review in Process status.
Others are Equity Assurance on Review in process status, Capital Express Review in Process, Universal insurance Plc Review in process, Unic Insurance Plc Review in process, and Saham Unitrust Insurance Nigeria Ltd also on review in process status.
The firms were required to present their accounts in line with international Finance Reporting standard (IFRS) requirements.
The insurance sector, fully adopted the IFRS 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 fines 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 every year 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.
