A leader in insurance business in Bangladesh has admitted that due to failure of a section of insurance companies to settle claims of matured policies public trust in the business is waning although the sector manages to maintain a growth trend.

B.M. Yusuf Ali, Managing Director of Popular Life Insurance Co and president of Bangladesh Insurance Forum has also pointed at lack of transparency in the running of the sector. Such a candid statement from a leading insurance businessman is praiseworthy. But the question is where lies its solution.

The failure of insurance companies to settle claims may be expressed in numbers and percentages which form fractions of insurance deals, but to a policy holder it comes as a disaster on his hard earned savings of life. The loss cannot be compensated for in any way. 

Thus those who fail to settle insurance claims should be held accountable and made to pay the same at any cost. The punishment should be such that none would dare commit such a crime again. 

The insurance regulators should find out whether the companies defaulting on claims settlement have done so while maintaining luxurious offices and life styles. Whether their poor performance is due to corrupt misuse of their revenue resources for, say, disproportionate transfer of fund to other business or outright embezzlement. 

Policy holders who faithfully paid the premiums knowing fully well that their maturity claims would not match the money they deposit because of the risk coverage over the insured period should not suffer for the folly of insurers.

The policy holders are exposed to other tragedies too. A section of insurance agents of late have started to deceive them. Insurance agents in many cases personally collect premiums from policy holders and deposit those to respective accounts to make sure their regular commission income. But in recent times there has emerged the advent of some insurance agents who collect premiums from policy holders but do not deposit the money against policies. At a certain point they disappear with the accumulated money abusing the faith of policy holders and leaving them in a totally helpless situation.

Depositors of banks have started complaining that transaction of money has not been as smooth before. Many banks cannot help them open Letters of Credit in time. Restrictions on imports due to a dollar crunch have pushed up prices of consumer items as well industrial machinery and raw materials.

Bank loan default continues to bedevil financial sector and there seems to be no end to it in sight. 

Business leaders should realise the need to bridle all corruption in the field of business. They must remember that their growth has been very generously promoted from the scratch with support from monetary resources coming from the ordinary people. When steps were taken in the mid seventies to turn a command economy into a mixed one there had hardly been a privately owned industry worth the name in the country. And when private banks or insurance companies were set up their start-up capitals came mostly from the publicly owned banks or financial institutions.

The introduction of a free market economy from 1991 set the stage for unfurling the productive potentials of individuals and groups who created wealth and made the nation rich. The cycle now shows the sign of reversing. The resources of ordinary people that helped propel the growth of the private sector are now being misappropriated. 

Unless the businesses succeed to stop the greed of unholy elements who are playing with the life and property of the ordinary people, time may not be far away when people will come up with a demand to curb new-found freedoms enjoyed the new breeds of businesses of the last three decades. Please restrain the wrong doers before that happens.

(Mostafa Kamal Majumder is the former Editor of The New Nation.)

Courtesy:Greenwatchbd.com