Africa-Press – Tanzania. MINISTER for Finance and Planning Minister Dr Mwigulu Nchemba has stressed on the need for the insurance industry to focus on innovation and digitalization of the sector’s transformation.
According to him, transformation in the industry can only happen if the sector pivots itself on innovation and synergy, with the first part being digitalization.
The call was made on Friday during the 2021 Tanzania Insurance Brokers Association (TIBA) annual conference, where Minister Nchemba was represented by the Ministry’s Permanent Secretary (PS), Mr Emmanuel Tutuba.
Mr Tutuba said that digitalisation is easiest to be accepted, but the most difficult to be implemented.
“The second part is for the players including re/insurers, insurance brokers/agents, bancassurers and others across the insurance value chain to work in synergy so as to achieve the economies of scale,” he said.
The PS stressed that achieving inclusive insurance inevitably requires concerted efforts and coherent strategies to address market and regulatory factors that inhibit access to insurance for the majority of the underserved or unsaved market segments.
As Tanzania works to improve insurance penetration rate, there will be challenges along the way wherein response should not be to skip, rather, collaboratively and continuously solve them, advised the PS.
TIBA President, Mr Amir Kiwanda said that, the conference brought insurance stakeholders from within and outside the country, including Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and representatives from the Organization of Eastern and Southern Africa Insurers (OESAI), to collectively chart effective ways to boost the insurance industry as well as expanding its services to reach more Tanzanians at grassroots level.
Earlier, the Conference Convener, Fikky Ntomola commented that the theme ‘Insurance Development for Economic Growth’ resonated well with the financial sector development master plan 2020 -2030 to the insurance sub-sector.
He added that the 10 Year Strategic Plan for the insurance industry aims at achieving some objectives, including an increase in the insurance penetration rate from the current 0.51 percent to 5 percent of Gross domestic product (GDP) and growth of the insurance sector to help the country to attain middle income status.
“Majority of our people should also have health insurance by 2030 and 20 percent of the population will have life saving products. Insurance Brokers, we have a huge role to play to ensure that the industry attains these goals,” he said.
He added, rather than competing on prices, the sector needs to develop new products, encourage research and development in the industry on how to improve service delivery to clients as well as eliminating unsavory business ethics and enhance professionalism in the industry.
