A Kumasi Circuit court has convicted two insurance fraudsters for selling fake insurance stickers to unsuspecting members of the general public.

The conviction was occasioned by a series of investigations conducted by the Police after they were picked up sometime early this year by a joint task force of the Police and the National Insurance Commission (NIC).

The convicts, Mavis Nyarko and Baafi Kwasi Appiah who were both Kumasi-based insurance agents were, at the end of the trial convicted to pay a fine of six thousand Ghana cedis (GH¢6,000) each or in default serve a two-year jail term.

In addition to their conviction, the NIC will have the two convicts blacklisted from transacting any form of the insurance business.

There are currently other suspects facing trial in various courts in Kumasi and other parts of the country for similar offences with the view to flushing out these miscreants from the system.

Caution to members of the insuring public

Commenting on the conviction, the Commissioner of Insurance, Dr. Justice Ofori admonished members of the public to “In their own interest and in the interest of innocent third parties, expect to receive SMS alerts immediately after purchasing motor insurance from only Insurance Companies in good standing as published in the media and the NIC website www.nicgh.org in November 2020.

It is instructive to note that the NIC had earlier caused the arrest of some perpetrators of this crime and the culprits are still under investigation.

The Motor Insurance Database (MID)

In spite of the introduction of the Motor Insurance Database (MID) with electronic stickers from the NIC which replaced the old system of issuing manual motor insurance stickers upon renewal or purchase of new motor insurance policies, certain unscrupulous persons have still not relented in their fictitious ways of perpetrating this crime to the detriment of unsuspecting members of the general public.

The Commissioner lamented that the reality only dawns on these motorists/patrons when involved in accidents and innocent third party victims of such accidents suffer lack of compensation.

Huge loss to the state

It is estimated that the insurance sector lost at least GH¢325 million to fraudsters and fake insurance operatives in 2018 alone. This figure is expected to keep rising as the years go by hence the introduction of the MID to nip this phenomenon in the bud.