Nairobi – Kenya’s Insurance Regulatory Authority (IRA) has launched of a new electronic regulatory system (ERS) that is tipped to ease the licence issuance process. Sammy Makove, the IRA chief executive, said on Wednesday the new ERS portal will cut licence issuance time by half and reduce IRA supervision costs.He said insurance companies have been bringing in their returns and files in cartons, which have taken up most of the authority store space over time.The IRA said the manual inspection of insurance hard copy financial statements and documents before issuance of a licence had forced it to spend more money to rent space, a cost that will now be cut with the new online system. Makove said the system will also help them save money they previous spent on hiring casuals and data clerks to manage the files.IRA which has to inspect, supervise and issue licences for 5,000 entities in the insurance industry, majority of them being agencies, said the ERS system is intelligent and capable of detecting errors and weakness areas for firms from the data submitted.“In the past we have had to process licences up to April having received applications in September, but now firms got their licences before year end,” IRA technical director Agnes Ndirangu said at the launch.ICT cabinet secretary Fred Matiang’i said the focus for the government now is to migrate public financial services to a digital platform for convenience of various users.He said the government aims to migrate to a digital public payment platform by April.There are 43 insurance companies operating in Kenya.
