The Fastest Growing Insurance Company in Ghana | Activa International Insurance

Interview with Benjamin Yamoah, Chief Operating Officer of Activa International Insurance

What is your vision for Activa?

My name is Benjamin Yamoah, I am the Chief Operating Officer of Activa Ghana. My vision for Activa is to be one of the top 5 insurance companies in Ghana within the next 5 years. Activa currently is the foremost insurer of multinational companies and we are now branching into retail businesses. In 2014, we got an award from the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) for the Best Insurance Company of the Year. Clearly this shows that people are becoming aware of Activa.
A few years ago, we also received an award for the fastest growing insurance company in Ghana.

When do you plan to branch out into the retail business?

With retail, we started in early 2015. We are currently setting up agencies all over the country. We also have general agents in the regions where we don’t have our own branches. A general agent sells business on our behalf.

Tell us about the challenges you face in your daily operations.

The challenges we face in our daily operations are numerous because the Ghanaian market is very competitive. The insurance penetration in Ghana is low, at about 2% and coupled with illiteracy it makes the work very challenging in the sense that people do not understand what insurance is. People think that when they take a policy that they must benefit at all costs but insurance only covers uncertainties.

The insurance penetration in Ghana is low, at about 2% and coupled with illiteracy it makes the work very challenging in the sense that people do not understand what insurance is.

What are you doing in order to spread the awareness and to educate the public? Are you running any initiatives?

As mentioned earlier, we have general agents all over the country and we also have our agency offices all over the country. We are organising more training sessions for our agents who go out to the market to sell the products we offer. We are not just sitting in our offices expecting people to come to us. We have trained people out there reaching clients in order to sell our products and to better explain our products to the public.

In terms of corporate social responsibility, what initiatives does Activa have?

We recently donated some computers to the cardio-thoracic unit of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital. We have also been sponsoring various awards such as the Sports Writers Association of Ghana awards. The Activa Group also has an Activa Foundation, which supports many projects including the Ebola project.

To conclude, what is your final message?

For me, Activa is the insurance company to do business with. We have dealt with multinational companies, having paid huge claims for multinationals without making much noise about that and so people don’t know us yet that much. However, as we are now branching into retail, we are using the experience we have in settling corporate claims and so the name Activa will be out there in the very near future for everybody to hear.