Insurance agents in Kenya are crying foul over unfair treatment by insurance companies whom they accuse of engaging in improper business practices to the detriment of insurance agents.
The number of insurance agents fell last year by 8% even as the penetration of insurance in Kenya dropped to a fifteen-year low.
This is the annual agent choice award – an event that recognizes the best insurance agents in the market.
Here, agents working for Sanlam insurance, UAP and jubilee insurance dominated the awards.
Behind the glitz though is an industry that is shrinking as seen through the decline in insurance penetration to a 15 year low of 2.4 % in 2018.
A worrying trend considering that insurance agents made the biggest contribution to total insurance premiums in 2018 at 39.3%
According to the insurance regulatory authority, the number of insurance agents in 2018 dropped by nearly 8% to 8,612 from 9,348 in 2017.
This as players in the insurance industry engage in an apparent race to the bottom.
Insurance agents are calling upon the insurance regulator to restore order and sanity in the industry.
The latest industry report by the association of Kenya insurers shows that the insurance industry’s net profit dropped by 47% to 7.27 billion shillings; a pointer to the concerns that insurance agents want the industry regulator to immediately address.
