Uganda to host 2017 AIO conference

Uganda will host the 44th edition of the annual Af­rican Insurance Organ­isation (AIO) conference and General Assembly in May 2017, Kaddunabi Lubega the Insurance Regulatory Authority (IRA) has revealed.

AIO has 326 members: 315 of them from 45 countries in Afri­ca and 11 are associate members from 7 overseas countries.

Africa accounts for a paltry 1.4 per cent of the total world insur­ance premiums due to chronical­ly low levels of penetration.

While speaking at the 43rd Conference and Annual General Assembly of the AIO in Marrake­ch, Morocco recently, President of AIO, Lamia Ben Mahmoud said: “Insurance penetration is still a hard nut to crack, the share of insurance premiums as a per­centage of GDP, has remained ex­ceptionally low.”

“In some countries it only amounts to less than 1 per cent, well below the global emerging market average of 2.7 per cent in 2014, while Africa’s share of the global insurance market is 1.1 per cent for non-life and 1.8 per cent for life but this is a demonstra­tion of the enormous growth po­tential within the African insur­ance industry, an indicator that the insurance market is still wide­ly untapped.

“In order to insure Africa’s fu­ture, we must devise strategies aimed at facing the continent’s numerous challenges today….there is still wide spread igno­rance on the benefits of insur­ance. Added to this list is an acute insufficiency of product differen­tiation. Every company should continue to act to promote ex­pertise,” she added.