Strengthen regulation in the health insurance industry — Insurer

Sales and Marketing Manager of Nationwide Medical Health Insurance, Isaac Nartey has described the health insurance market as one with good growth prospects.

He stated that the client base of all the players in his estimation was low and even the 14 players in the industry had not covered a lot of grounds, but more will be done to rope in fresh members. 

“If you take the corporate client base which is where almost all the private players are targeting if you put all of us our numbers together as in the client base we have it is not up to 200,000,” he said.

He also believes the informal market holds a lot of potential and thus they have launched a product to target that market segment, which will roll out in June.

He called on local industry players to ramp up efforts to grow their dominance and role in the market before it is besieged by foreign health insurers.

He commended the NHIS in growing its numbers since its inception. Data from the NHIA puts growth in terms of active membership from 1.3 million in 2005 to 8.9 million in 2012.

Background

The private health insurance industry in Ghana is regulated by the National Health Insurance Authority. The Authority registers, licenses and supervises the operations of private health insurers in Ghana.

The law [National Health Insurance Act, 2012 (Act 852)] establishes two type of schemes, Private Mutual Health Insurance Scheme (PMHIS) and Private Commercial Health Insurance Scheme (PCHIS).

According to the regulator, there are currently 14 private commercial health insurers in the country as of December 2017. 

Pricing

He also believes that the completion in the industry is forcing some players to undercut their pricing to win over customers. This he believes does not bode well for the entire industry and particularly clients. This he believes gives the already challenged industry a bad name 

Fighting fraud

He also disclosed that the company has put in place a number of measures employing the use of technology to cut back on fraudulent claims and wrong billing of clients, and generate good customer feedback to help customers save money.

The use of technology has also aided communication between the insurer and service providers. This allows a timely response to limits on claims that reduce losses and inconvenience.

Regulation

He called on the regulator to be proactive in dealing with many challenges the industry faces such as the undercutting of prices by some players in the industry. The strengthening of regulation, Isaac believes, will enable the industry to grow smoothly and efficiently.

“I think the regulation side, if it is strengthened, will make the industry grow much profitable and work very well for all Ghanaians,” he stated.

 

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