Make policies words customer friendly, INEC tells Operators

Oluwakayode Adelowokan

L-R: Vice President of the Nigerian Council of Registered Insurance Brokers (NCRIB), Mr. Kayode Okunore; Chairman, NCRIB, Lagos Area Committee, Mr. Patrick Ikponmwosa, and Resident Electoral Commissioner, Lagos State, Dr. Lolu Ogunmola, at the April general meeting of NCRIB, Lagos Area Committee in Lagos.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has called on insurance operators in Nigeria to be more explicit and friendly with the wordings in insurance policies.

This is according to the Resident Electoral Commissioner, Lagos State, Dr. Lolu Ogunmola, who disclosed this on Thursday during the April general meeting of the Nigerian Council of Registered Insurance Brokers (NCRIB), Lagos Area Committee at the NCRIB secretariat in Lagos that the contract wordings contained in the policies are ambiguous for customers.

He mentioned, “words like willfully, recklessly, negligently, whereas, wherefore, to mention but a few sound too technical and scary to people who will ordinarily want to key into your products for their personal exigencies.”

Ogunmola therefore appealed to insurance operators to make the policies come in more friendly terms with the coverage and meanings clearly spelt out. 

Meanwhile, the Vice President of the Council, Mr. Kayode Okunore, said the ambiguous words and small imprint that is usually contained in the policies were in ‘bad old times’, claiming that things are now better since there is nothing to hide from prospective policy holder.

Okunore also said it is important for Nigerians to make use of the services of broker whenever it may want to buy any insurance policy because of their understanding of the language.

“Brokers are always available to protect the interest of every prospective policy holder because they will delete whatever they think are not meant to be in the policy.”

In his appeal to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), a council member and the immediate past President of the NCRIB, Lagos Area Committee, Mr. Tunde Oguntade, urged INEC to stem down on the non-refundable bidding charges demanded from brokers when applying for accounts.