KARACHI: President of Pakistan Dr. Arif Alvi while highlighting the importance of insurance has said that the five-year plan was a step in the right direction to provide social security coverage to Pakistanis through insurance penetration. The president said this while addressing the two-day International Ensure Impact Conference held here on Thursday.
In his address the president stressed upon the need to create awareness among the masses regarding the significance of insurance and advised the industry to adopt a swift complaint redressal mechanism and resolve the issue of misleading marketing practices by insurance agents.
Dr Alvi asked SECP to focus on low penetration and come up with schemes to cover the need for disaster risk financing in times of calamity. He emphasized about the challenges faced by insurance companies, including high insurance costs and deceptive marketing methods and highlighted the need for cost transparency and public image improvement in the insurance industry.
President Alvi appreciated SECP for taking bold initiative and developing a five-year strategy with precise goals.
Insurance Sector and Challenges
Addressing the conference Dr. Ishrat Hussain highlighted the way forward for the insurance sector and urged upon regulators to adopt two-track approach: First one as the Lighter regulatory oversight for running businesses and second handholding for start-ups. He advised SECP to find out challenges and obstacles and establish friendly environment for nurturing of new business. He further said that the SECP being the unique regulator with dynamic jurisdiction, has a great potential to mobilize households’ savings as well as corporate savings by developing and energizing the NBFC.
Later Andres McCartney from Asian Development Bank (ADB) apprised about ADB’s program of supporting the initiative of boosting insurance coverage in Pakistan.
Meanwhile, Chairman SECP Akif Saeed in his concluding remarks stressed upon the participants to carry forward the knowledge gained, the connections made, and the inspiration received during the conference to drive the insurance industry to new heights.
