Standard Alliance Insurance, pay my money

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Standard Alliance Insurance, pay my money

Permit me to use your widely read newspaper to purge my choler about the wicked refusal of Standard Alliance Insurance to pay my long-due claim in an insurance policy I subscribed to about two years now.

I subscribed to two policies with the company in April 2018. The first is a one-year policy with the number SFAS/18/0005800/IBD (Special Flexible Assurance Scheme) at the Ibadan regional office of the company.  For the one-year policy, I paid N50,000 monthly without fail into the firm’s Ecobank (0942000200), Zenith (1011813306) and UBA (1017621521) accounts (the company intermittently changed the account into which to pay midway into the policy).

The second policy is a five-year plan of N70,000 monthly which I also paid into the aforementioned bank accounts with defaulting for 12 months. I have so far paid N840, 000 on this policy.

Upon maturity of the one-year policy, I ought to have been paid my N650,000 contribution plus accrued interest since May, having paid N50,000 for 13 months instead of 12. All the necessary paperwork to fast-track the payment was done early in May. As I write this letter on November 7, 2019, my money has not been paid and there is no official word as to when it will be paid.

Countless visits to the firm’s regional office, which ought to liaise with the headquarters in Lagos to quicken the payment have been fruitless. The regional head, Mr Bayo Sobande, no longer picks my calls, nor does he respond to WhatsApp and text messages sent to his two telephone numbers.

During some of my visits to the Ibadan office of the company, I met a couple of equally frustrated clients whose claims are being held on to. They painted a gloomy picture about the company. Tales were also told of how clients had to storm the Lagos headquarters of the company and create scenes before a tiny percentage of them got paid.

But unable to continue to wait for Godot, I petitioned the Ibadan zonal office of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on August 22, 2019, after all means to get the company to pay my money failed. On the day the EFCC officials and I went to the Ibadan office, the regional head was said to be unavailable. I am not aware he has since honoured the invitation of the EFCC officials. One of the staff had boasted that the company had got a blanket court order purportedly restraining the EFCC from ‘harassing’ its staff over matters like this.

I am using this medium to appeal to Standard Alliance Insurance to pay my money. I targeted a niche that I want to deploy takings from the one-year policy to sort. I need the money urgently.

I also wish to appeal to the regulator of the insurance industry, the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM), to look into this matter and check the books of the company, if NAICOM’s mandate permits. NAICOM should also put stringent measures in place to safeguard money collected from Nigerians, like the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) is doing to banks.

I don’t want to believe we have on our hands a phenomenon called agency capture, where the regulator itself becomes regulated by industry players it ought to regulate. If there is need to raise the capitalisation for insurance from what currently obtains, let it be done with dispatch. 

Adekanmbi, Dare Babatunde,

Samueldare2002@yahoo.ca    

Standard Alliance Insurance, pay my money
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