41 insurance firms meet June 30 submission deadline

… as 17 to be on daily penalty of N5000.00

Ahead June 30 deadline given to insurance com- panies to submit their full-year audited fi- nancial report to the Na- tional Insurance Com- mission (NAICOM), as stipulated in the Insurance Act 2003, 41 of them have submitted their accounts.

From the number, 34 have gotten approval, seven are at different lev- els of review while the remaining 17 are yet to submit their accounts, a document accessed by BusinessDay reveals.

The implication of this is that the remaining com- panies, according to the Act, would be on penalty of N5000.00 each day that pass- es, payable to the industry regulator until they submit their audited account.

Analysts, who reacted on the development, said this was a lot of improve- ment from what was seen the previous year, showing that many companies were beginning to understand the new reporting stan- dard.

Nicholas Opara, direc- tor, supervision, NAICOM, said during an interview that issue of financial re- porting was a major chal- lenge facing the insurance industry, where it was dif- ficult for companies to make early rendition, with a lot of financial reengi- neering. “Today, financial reen- gineering in the insurance industry is gone for good, and we can see up to 40 companies having submit- ted their annual accounts at end of June,” Opara said.

This is a tremendous shift from the past, and our companies’ financial presentations can be com- parable with their counter- parts in Europe, America and other advanced mar- kets because it is in line with International Finan- cial Reporting Standard

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