12 Feb 2014

 Insurer, Zurich Botswana, considers the northern part of Botswana an important area where the company has been doing business for more than 20 years.

Also, the north, especially Francistown, is coming up well with the mining boom that it had been experiencing over the last few years. Zurich Botswana’s chief executive officer, Ms Bilkiss Moorad, said this during a stakeholder interaction meeting held for their brokers and agents in Francistown on February 10.

She explained that the objective of the meeting was borne out of the realisation that they had not done any engagement with their northern stakeholders concerning the good work that they were doing. “We also wanted to recommit and re-affirm that we are here for the long run,” she said.

For many years, she said, a large portion of Zurich Botswana’s brokers came from the north. However, she said the last 24 months had been challenging, especially with the issue of outsurance, but noted that the company managed to stabilise the situation and paid clients for their claims despite this.

On other issues, Ms Moorad explained that Zurich Botswana had a great history of building capacity among its employees. The company was doing well in the localisation of skills, noting that all its employees in Francistown were Batswana, except one.

All these processes, she said, were designed to benefit and skill Batswana. She said insurance had never been a career of choice for graduates but Zurich Botswana was training Batswana on the industry. “Our pool of junior employees are coming up well and have been excelling and benefitted from secondments to South Africa,” she added.

Consequently, she said, they had taken advantage of the mining boom in the north. She added that the tough competition was good and healthy for the industry as it meant that clients got value for money. Chairman of Zurich Botswana, who is also the CEO of Zurich South Africa, Mr Edwyn O’ Neill, said the company offered global risk management to clients.

He said Zurich Botswana accounted for 23 per cent of the insurance market in the industry. As part of its re-engagement with stakeholders, Mr O’ Neill said company wanted to do service correction in the region after the challenges they faced with outsurance.

“We have managed to normalise the processes and this is important as clients needed to trust us,” he said. “That is why we continued to pay claims during the trying times.” ENDS