Ian Ross, the insurance guru and chairman of the new entrant in the local market, Hollard Insurance Botswana, waged a severe attack on the re-insurance companies for looting Africa of its mega resources.
Speaking at the same occasion with the Finance and Development Minister, Baledzi Gaolathe, Ross warned of a silent revolution taking place in the financial market which is likely to correct the existing situation.
“There is what we call risk solvency and supervision and if we can understand we would not be re-insuring our risks in North America or Europe. What we need to do is to develop dynamic financial analysis, which ensures that we do have enough capital cover and supervision.
“You have to analyse the risk that you assume and capital adequacy and if we do more we would expand our businesses,” he added.
Ross is the chairman of the newly established Hollard Insurance Botswana, which is an offshoot of Hollard Insurance South Africa. The company has operations in a number of African states, United Kingdom and Asia.
“The region (Southern Africa) must understand that we can manage our risks I do not want international insurance companies because they take bucket of billion US dollar from us everyday,” he said.
The big re-insurance companies largely based in North America and Europe are the one, which controls billions of dollars from the local insurance companies to mitigate future possible losses from around the world.
The money leaves the already impoverished Africa to seat in banks and stocks in the more developed countries.
“Imagine we can develop our own tools of risk based on solvency and supervision. We do have the skills, actuaries and financial analysts,” he added.
He said the most impediment is that premium in this part of the world are so high simply because they have been inflated by international companies He pointed out that if the premium were realistic insurance companies would raise a lot of money locally and at the same time be able to invest in the neighbouring countries.
He said Botswana government was on the right track for trying to regulate the sector to ensure that insurance was accessible, in simple language and affordable.
