* Smart

As part of efforts to ensure insurance fraudsters are eliminated, the Nigeria Insurance Association (NIA) has implored insurance companies to upload all car Insurance policies on the Nigerian Insurance Industry Database (NIID).

The Chairman of NIA, Mr Tope Smart, made the appeal during the association’s interactive session with newsmen on Tuesday in Lagos.

He said the NIID which was launched in 2010 but became active in 2011 was expected to house all car insurance policies till date.

The NIA chairman said the directive would further protect the image of the industry.

He said: “It is more of disgrace if a policy holder presents his or her car insurance policy after a collusion or crash and such insurance policy is not traceable, even on the NIID.

“It will become more embarrassing, especially if the policy is authentic but could not be traceable at the point it was needed.

“This will further destroy the good image we are projecting.”

According to the NIA boss, about three million car insurance policies are currently uploaded on the NIID out of 14 million cars on Nigerian roads.

However, he said that only 2.5 million cars were active on NIID.

“The data above explains the reason all insurance companies need to update their insurance car policies on NIID.

“We need to know whether the remaining cars are insured or not and if the activities of fraudsters are still on.

“It’s only if insurance companies comply with the directives above that we can ascertain,” he said.

He also said that the association had on Jan. 10 launched the NIID Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) Code * 565*11# to intensify the checks.

“The code works independent of internet connectivity, any mobile phone (not necessarily a Smartphone) will communicate with the NIID system to retrieve policy status whenever required,” he said. (NAN)