October 15, 2021
By: Hafsatu Z Bangura
Universal Brokerage Services (UBS), in collaboration with six insurance companies has on Thursday 14th October 2021, at the New Freetown City Council conference hall; Wallace Johnson Street, Freetown introduced life assurance to local council employees.
The six companies that UBS are working with are STACO insurance company, National Insurance Company, AUREOL insurance company, CAPITAL EXPRESS, International Insurance Company and RITCORP insurance company.
Welcoming local council employees and journalists at the meeting, General Manager for UBS, Mohamed Sankoh said the insurance market just like any other market is making up of insuring the public of safer place of doing business.
According to him, the Insurance Act of 2016 urged companies to have the compliance liability scheme for their workers, but that such hasn’t been effective over the years.
He said life assurance been one of the product that would be introduced to universities and colleges during a meeting held at SLJA office, whiles adding that the meeting was done because of the low penetration rate of life assurance to the insurance of the public.
“We as marketer thought it fit to educate the public through the help of the insurance companies to create awareness on this beneficial product. We all know that human life is subjected to risk of death and disability due to natural accidental courses, when human life is lost or a person is disable permanently or temporally there is a loss of income to the household. Life assurance is a financial cover for such contingencies with human life such as death, disability, accident, retirement among others,” he said.
Giving the purpose of the meeting, Chief Operating Officer for UBS, Victor Sheriff said the meeting was for them to introduce life assurance to 22 local councils after 11 years of existence, life assurance have been operating in the country, but councils, universities and colleges have been left out.
He said on the 19th September they met with universities and colleges, adding that after the meeting they decided to meet with councils because they too are very important in the society as there are lot of development functions within the councils.
He said more than 80, 000 civil servants have life assurance.
Mr. Sankoh said bringing councils together would help employees to have life assurance and it would talk for them when they retire from work also if that individual is sick he or she would have access to his or her money through life assurance.
President of Local Councils Associations, Joseph Munda Bindi said they are looking forward to the engagement when the insurance companies got to their respective local councils and they would only talk with the arrival to their councils.
He said they are excepting to have deeper understanding of the company’s operations, policies that would enable them to contribute, but maintained that the meeting to them was just an Introduction to them and he thanked UBS for thinking about them in the council.
He continued that they are intelligent people in the local councils so they would look at different policies and adapt themselves to those that would best fit their members and they would fit the situation, he promised that every council would work as council, also they would provide covers for their members to ensure that each council benefit from the life assurance.
In his keynote address, President of Sierra Leone Insurance Association, Raymond Macaulay said insurance is a risk transfer mechanism which is a social contract just like NASSIT wherein someone pay some amount and they are protected against certain rent and for insurance they are protected against death.
He said insurance is dealing with life and life assurance is different from other insurance because the event may or not happen, adding that assurance also deals with certainty.
He said when someone joins life assurance there are so many benefits awaiting them like if someone has premature death, the beneficiaries would be taken care of by the assurance, adding that life assurance is a form of savings.