NIC launches customer complaints system
By Isaac AIDOO, Accra
The insuring public can now lodge complaints online and be sure to receive speedy resolution.
The National Insurance Commission (NIC) has launched an automated Complaints and Management System to better serve and respond to the queries of customers.
Acting Commissioner of Insurance, Mr Michael Kofi Andoh was unhappy with the stress customers are put through when they have one challenge or the other, which gives insurers a bad name.
“Customers lodge complaints, they don’t hear anything, no one tells them anything, they go and come, some travel all the way from their villages and come everyday and they don’t get any response from anyone and these developments give the insurance industry a bad name,” Mr Andoh lamented.
The automated Complaints Management System will swiftly redress to client complaints and will help boost the confidence in the industry.
Mr Andoh stressed the need for insurance companies to ensure they have well trained officers to man the system and ensure complaints received are handled with dispatch.
“The CMS being launched today signifies NIC’s commitment to support the market and improving the customer’s journey and experience by creating an efficient grievance redress and complaints handling process that ensures speedy resolution of complaints received at the NIC,” Mr Andoh stated
The Insurance Awareness Coordinators’ Group in collaboration with the Ghana Insurers Association in 2018 launched a similar complaints bureau. The structure of that bureau was for a three-tier complaints forum for the public.
It was to encourage the public to in the event that they had problems with an insurance company to launch a complaint to the management of the company.
Chairman of the Group, Mr Wilson Tei recalled that the group found that very often the problems could easily be resolved only if attention was paid to them by top officers of the insurance companies.
He disclosed that the plan was for the initial call to be made to the insurance company, then to the complaints and management bureau of the Ghana Insurers Association.
If the customer was still not satisfied then it is escalated to the National Insurance Commission for a resolution.
Mr Tei observed that the Ghana Insurers Association had found from the establishment of the initial complaints bureau that 90 percent of the complaints lodged were resolved when they got to the Association.
