The Insurance Regulatory Authority (IRA) is gearing up to register and license 10,000 agents who will help grow uptake of the agriculture insurance among farmers.
The IRA Chief Executive Officer, Ibrahim Lubega Kaddunabbi revealed the plan during a breakfast meeting with stakeholders in the insurance sector yesterday.
He said that the move will boost the capacity of government programs in agriculture to benefit farmers by having insurers shoulder challenges.
“As we all know agriculture is the backbone of our economy and as we know, the government has launched the parish development model with a big component of agriculture,” he said.
In support of the agriculture insurance consortium, we want to license a cluster of agents who are only going to sell agriculture insurance to the population,” he said.
The licensed agents will specialize in selling agriculture insurance products.
In attendance were the 13 insurance companies which formed a coalition with the government to form the Agro Consortium Uganda Limited.
The body’s target is to reduce the burden of financial loss as a result of destruction and damage of crops and livestock due to natural disasters.
To achieve this, the body supports training, sensitization and creating awareness in the population about agriculture insurance.
Kaddunabbi urged insurance companies to emphasize micro insurance as a faster way of growing the insurance enrolment.
In the past three quarters of 2022, they registered an 18.6 percent growth out-performing their set targets.
“We managed to underwrite businesses worth shs1.8 trillion. It is an improvement from what it was in the three quarters of 2021,” Kaddunabbi said.
We have seen above 18.6% growth over this period and that is more than the 15% we had anticipated our growth would be,” he added.
He attributed the success to confidence the public has in the service due to the efforts by the IRA and insurance companies, and also what has been done to improve claim settlement.
