ECOWAS BROWN CARD MOTOR INSURANCE SCHEME

Shortly after the formation of WAICA in 1973 the Founding Fathers grappled with the idea of how to make travel by road in West Africa easier for motorists. Back then each individual country required that any vehicle plying roads with their territory must have insurance cover issued by a recognised insurer.
To facilitate travelling across the Founding Fathers conceived the idea of a Motor Insurance Scheme to make available such cover.
Because WAICA was primarily an organisation for companies in Anglophone West Africa countries this Scheme was faced with challenges from the onset because geographically only Liberia and Sierra Leone shared a common border, with the others having Francophone countries as their neighbours.
To surmount this challenge, the Founding Fathers engaged the, also newly established 1975 Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) with a view of voluntarily ceding this brilliant idea to them to operate given their much wider and all-inclusive coverage of the West African sub-region.
Given the mandate of ECOWAS to create a borderless socio-economic region that would facilitate easy movement of people goods and services that institutions whole heartedly took on board the idea and renamed it ECOWAS Brown Card Motor Insurance Scheme.
Today the Scheme, working through a network of bureaux in each ECOWAS Member country makes this additional insurance cover automatic when issuing insurance policies for motorist on their vehicles.

WEST AFRICAN INSURANCE INSTITUTE (WAII)

Due to the very serious dearth of quality talent at the middle management level of the insurance industry in WAICA member countries, the Executive Committee (Board) of WAICA at the time considered it very prudent to set up an institute to train personnel from the industry and also university graduates to fill this gap.
WAICA at the time worked with the Governments of the member States and through that group was able to source technical assistance and funding from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and WAII was established in 1978 with its first cohort of students.
WAII’s flagship program is a one-year diploma, which accepts between 25 and 50 students every year. The institute also offers short courses and tailor-made programs for its clientele.
Today, the institute has trained over 1000 insurance professionals at the Middle Management level, most of whom are top executives in insurance institutions in West Africa or own and manage such institutions.
WAII was originally hosted in Liberia where it enjoyed full Diplomatic Status. However due to the Liberian Civil war the institution had to be relocated to The Gambia where it also enjoys Diplomatic Status.

WAICA REINSURANCE POOL

One of the aims/objectives of the Founding Fathers of WAICA at the very formation of the body was to establish an institution that will create reinsurance capacity thereby conserve scare foreign currency within the region.
The ultimate idea at the time was to establish a fully-fledged insurance company. However, achieving this was challenging in the first few years. Nevertheless, determined as they were, the decision was made to take the initial step towards achieving this objective.
The decision resulted in the formation of a Reinsurance Pool as a stepping stone and with the view of transforming this organisation into a fully-fledged reinsurance company and thus WAICA Reinsurance Pool was set up. This pool operated profitably for many years and was being managed by Nigeria Reinsurance Corporation and then by United African Insurance Brokers (UAIB) of Nigeria.
In 2011 the Pool was subsumed into the long awaited WAICA Reinsurance Corporation Plc.

WAICA REINSURANCE CORPORATION PLC

In 2010 the then Executive Committee (now Governing Council) tasked the Secretary General/CEO of WAICA at the time as part of his Key Performance Indicator (KPI) to ensure the creation and establishment of the long discussed WAICA Reinsurance Corp Plc.
In successfully accomplishing this task during the year the WAICA Reinsurance Pool was mutually retrieved from the Managers at the time (UAIB) and made to form the nucleus of the now giant WAICA Reinsurance Corp Plc.
The Government, Parliament and People of the Republic of Sierra Leone magnanimously offered to host the reinsurance institution’s headquarters in Freetown because they believed in the ideas of African renaissance and insurance. This offer included full Diplomatic Status and support in the building of WAICA Re’s headquarters.
With this base, the Secretariat set out to raise capital for the new institution, inviting investors to take up equity in the Corporation. In March 2011, WAICA Reinsurance Corporation Plc was launched in Lagos, Nigeria, by then President of the Republic of Sierra Leone, His Excellency Dr Ernest Bai Koroma with an initial capital of US$…….. Today WAICA Re has an authorised capital of US$100,000,000.00 with US$64,000,000 already paid up.
Today, WAICA Re is among the top 5 indigeneous/ local reinsurance institutions in West Africa, attaining high ratings by rating agencies AM Best and GCR and posting impressive results.

WEST AFRICA INSURANCE SUPERVISERS ASSOCIATION (WAISA)

At its conference in Banjul, in ………… WAICA delegates at the event saw the need for the Regulatory Authorities in its member states to come together as a single body to tackle the pressing agenda of harmonising the legal and operational aspects of the insurance industry in West Africa. The delegates, therefore, resolved to encourage the Five Commissioners of Insurance to create the body now known as WAISA.
The body was created and named the WAISA.
The body has since been working with the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ) and has established a College of Supervisors for the West African sub-region.
Work is on-going to realise the objective for which this body was created. The effort of WAISA dovetails and compliments the aims and objectives of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).