• Thursday, March 28, 2024
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BusinessDay

Beyond growing the market, what compulsory insurances can do for the public?

Insurance

Beyond the objective of developing the insurance industry to enable it contribute reasonably to the country’s economic growth through the implementation and enforcement of six compulsory insurances; it is to protect the public against accident, death and infringement of their rights in the course of other people’s activities.

These laws being promoted by the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) through its project on Market Development and Restructuring Initiative (MDRI) was targeted that arming the public’s such that in the event of loss resulting from the activities of other people, they can be compensated to enable them continue with their life.

While NAICOM, the market regulator has continued to emphasise on the cooperation of all stakeholders to make the compulsory insurances work, government has a major role to play in ensuring enforcement.

In developed societies, it is often heard that Doctors, Nurses or Hospitals were sued for wrong handling of patients, and some people are made to pay dearly for it or such institutions closed down or somebody’s operating license withdrawn. This is when people decide to enforce their rights when it infringed.

Today, it has gotten to that point in Nigeria when people should no long close their eyes to everything. We should take on doctors, nurses, hospitals when the commit blunder that result to unwarranted pains or death of patients under their care, an analysts said.

Majority of the medical practitioners are careless, do not have professional Indemnity cover and are not bothered because people still display high level ignorance when they do rubbish. So, people rise up to enforce their rights, they can be made pay for these errors from their business or their license can be withdrawn. This emphasizes the importance of Health Care Professional Indemnity Insurance for medical practitioners as compulsory requirement for their practice.

Professional indemnity insurance (PII) also called Professional liability insurance (PLI) but more commonly known as errors & omissions (E&O) in the US, is a form of liability insurance that helps protect professional advice- and service-providing individuals and companies from bearing the full cost of defending against a negligence claim made by a client, and damages awarded in such a civil lawsuit. The coverage focuses on alleged failure to perform on the part of, financial loss caused by, and error or omission in the service or product sold by the policyholder.

Health care Professional indemnity insurance is made compulsory in section 45 of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) Act 1999.

Another case is that of Motor Third Party Insurance. Outside here, people sue owners of vehicles who drive without motor third party insurance or drive with fake certificate and cause accident. At the end of the day, the person is jailed or made to pay some good fine.

Motor Third party Insurance is made compulsory in section 68 of the Insurance Act 2003, which mandates every vehicle plying the Nigerian road to have at least a motor third party against third party damage as a result of accident.

The people therefore should begin to engage lawyers to pursue their claims whenever they encounter a loss in the course of accident by a vehicle without motor third party insurance or when what they have is fake certificate.

Genuine motor third party insurance is not less than N5, 000.00 and obtainable only from the offices of NAICOM registered insurance companies.

 

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