Source: Daily Nation.
Original article available here.
NAIROBI, January 25 – Businesses affected by the post-election chaos have been given a lifeline after an insurance company announced that it would make good losses incurred. And the Co-operative Insurance Company of Kenya Limited managing director Nelson Kuria placed the company’s total risk exposure through its micro-insurance section as a result of the chaos at KES 17 billion (USD 240 million).
“We are committed to paying all claims arising from losses incurred by our clients as a result of the chaos,” said Mr Kuria.
Addressing the press at a post-election violence forum hosted by the Association of Microfinance Institutions (AMFI) at a Nairobi hotel, he said the company has already received a KES 55 million (USD 790,000) claim from one institution. The CIC MD said the payments will be done within insurance terms and conditions and subject to the policy taken but maintained that it will be flexible in its dealings with the affected.
“If you go in with the traditional insurance approach to these small traders, it will be too complex for them and will only end up confusing them,” he said.
He said the company does not have the political risk exclusion clause that would have effectively ruled out any compensation for claims arising from the current political impasse in the country.
“It is an arrangement we have with our re-insurers,” he said. Most insurance policies have exclusion clauses on compensation claims arising from riots, civil strife and other acts of violence like arson.
Aside from a few insurers, such clauses effectively exclude many of the claims that could be made in respect of the current chaotic scenes in the country in which most of the losses are related to arson or looting of businesses, buildings, assets like vehicles and farms.
Mr Kuria’s announcement came a day after the Association of Kenya Insurers (AKI), in a paid up advertisement that appeared in the local media on Wednesday, stated that “loss or damage arising from political risks are not covered.”
The insurance industry lobby left any compensation to those hit by the violence in the hands of individual insurers.
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