ISO 9001:2008 certified companies are those that have demonstrated ability to consistently provide products that meet customer and applicable statutory and regulatory requirements. Lion Assurance, Managing Director, Mr. Newton Jazire, who also recently received The 2013 Pearl of Africa Life Time Achievement Award, spoke to The CEO’s Taddewo Senyonyi, about this milestone.
You recently acquired an ISO certification. Tell me more about it? What does it mean to Lion Assurance and its customers?
ISO: 9001:2008 certification is a quality management system that we integrated into our business. This will make our business deliver a consistent level of quality to our customers by having well defined and regularly checked processes and procedures. So it’s our culture and a sign of commitment to the promises we make to our customers. As a business, we are going to use the ISO systems not to conform to the procedures or rules of ISO, but its part of our system.
The system ensures customer focus, offers guidance to the leadership, calls for involvement of all people in the organization and most importantly gives appropriate approach to decision making and continued improvement to the service offered to our customers. It will help us improve the efficiency of company operations. To us, it’s a statement to our stakeholders, the board, senior management team and the customers that the business will work on a well defined framework to achieve the intended goals and objectives. It’s a sign of approval from a 3rd party board that our company runs on internationally recognized ISO management system: 9001:2008.
Acquiring an ISO certification requires high levels of professionalism, besides there’re only two insurance companies in Uganda with ISO certification, making you the third. What did you do different to achieve this coveted certification?
One of the main objectives of ISO certification is to keep your processes for customers as simple as possible. We undertook an assessment of where we were in terms of service delivery to customers. We then got ISO external auditors based in Egypt. They sampled our documents what we had put on paper to find out whether we were implementing the processes and this went perfect since we had an implementation plan. So, they basically checked compliance issues, processes and procedures.
A few months ago, you launched Legal Guard, and together with other insurance companies, launched Agricultural Insurance dubbed Kungula Agrinsurance. How have the two products performed so far?
Letters to My Younger Self: What Uganda’s CEOs and Professionals Wish They Knew at the StartAgricultural insurance has performed very well, uptake in agriculture is very exciting with several inquiries about it. The uptake for Legal Guard is a bit slower because most Ugandans believe in settling cases out of court, but we believe it will do better in future.
What lessons have been drawn from the performance of these products so far and how do they inform Lion’s future in product innovation?
As long as you do your research right, you’ll always come up with the right products. We (insurance players) can only grow the industry by introducing more and more relevant products that meet the demands of our customers. We have also learnt that pilot projects are very important in getting to the final products. Prototype approach to your products is critical and it’s yielding results in the case of agricultural insurance.
Despite the increased product inovativeness and sensitization, insurance penetration still stagnates at 0.6%. Why is this so? What are you not doing right as the industry to change the status quo?
There is a time lag between introduction of the product and understanding of the products and eventually its consumption. We (insurance players) are in the development of products and insurance penetration will pick up with time. What is lacking for markets is that people don’t understand how insurance works, but they certainly know the benefits of insurance. So, it is not a gamble. We have carried out a lot of sensitization as an industry. The public appreciates the benefits of insurance but now what they need to appreciate too is how insurance works; procedures of claims among other things.
