Renowned business executive Sir Sam Jonah has urged the local insurance industry to adopt practical measures that will cushion it against emergencies as climate-related risks become more common.
“For Africa, and for Ghana specifically, this is not an abstract concern.
We are among the most climate-vulnerable regions on the planet.
“Agricultural risks, coastal flooding, erratic rainfall — these are not future threats; they are present realities.
The question is not whether these risks will knock on the door of the insurance industry in Ghana. They already have.
The question is whether our industry is ready to answer that knock with adequate products, pricing sophistication, and the reinsurance capacity to back its commitments,” Dr. Jonah said at the 2026 Annual Conference of the Insurance Brokers Association of Ghana yesterday.
Dr. Jonah said the old models of catastrophe risk built around hurricanes in the Caribbean and typhoons in Southeast Asia were no longer adequate and that floods in Dubai, wildfires in Europe, and freezes in Texas had become commonplace.
“Extreme weather is occurring in places that historically never experienced it, and insurers globally are being forced to fundamentally rethink their underwriting assumptions, their pricing models, and their capacity deployment strategies,” he said.
“The Swiss Re Institute estimates that global insured losses from natural disasters continue to rise sharply — with first-half 2025 losses reaching $80 billion, nearly double the 10-year average,” he added.
Dr. Jonah has vast experience in the business space, having headed AngloGold Ashanti from its former structure into a multinational mining facility.
At the event, he shared his experience in the insurance industry, where he acquired Madison Insurance, which was renamed Met Insurance.
In time, Met Insurance entered a transformative merger with Hollard Insurance of South Africa.
“That experience deepened my understanding of what this industry demands of its leaders: not merely financial acumen, but moral seriousness; not merely technical competence, but a genuine commitment to the people and institutions whose security depends on the promises we make and keep,” he said.
Challenges
Speaking on “Trust, Professionalism, and Purpose: Navigating the New Frontiers of Insurance,” Dr Jonah mentioned technological disruption with specific reference to artificial intelligence (AI); the growing fragmentation of the global economic and geopolitical order; talent crisis; and “the residual damage of the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme” as some of the challenges confronting the local industry.
He said while AI was reshaping underwriting, claims management, fraud detection, and customer engagement across the world’s leading insurance markets, the rise of trade barriers as supply chains fragmented, and capital flows became more unpredictable, impacted insurance risk pools and reinsurance treaties, making investment portfolios more tangible.
“One major reinsurer has spoken openly about using AI to ‘turn one human underwriter into five.’ Parametric insurance products, which pay out automatically upon verified trigger events, without the need for traditional loss adjustment, are growing rapidly in precisely the markets where traditional insurance has always struggled: agriculture, microinsurance, and emerging economy risk,” he said.
Dr Jonah said insurance globally, but especially in Africa, was struggling to attract and retain the next generation of professionals, stressing that the industry had an image problem among young people.
On the home front, he said the DDEP was a blow to the capital base of many firms — insurers and intermediaries alike.
“The DDEP exposed a structural vulnerability that our industry’s investment portfolios are too heavily concentrated in government securities.
Diversification of investment strategy and the building of more robust capital buffers must be standing agenda items for every board in this industry,” he stressed.
Dr. Jonah said with 44 licensed insurance companies and approximately 130 intermediaries in a market of Ghana’s current size, the competitive pressure was real and growing.
“Competition, properly pursued, is healthy. It drives innovation, improves service, and benefits clients.
But competition improperly pursued through premium dumping, through the loading of contracts without actuarial justification, and through the abandonment of underwriting discipline in pursuit of market share is not competition.
It is a slow act of self-destruction that damages every participant and ultimately leaves policyholders exposed,” he said.
Positives
He acknowledged that it was not all gloom in the local insurance space.
Citing how the Ghanaian insurance industry had emerged from “a genuinely difficult period” of COVID-19, Dr Jonah said the industry had demonstrated remarkable resilience.
“Industry-wide profit after tax rose by 40 percent in 2024 from GH₵886 million to GH₵1.24 billion, a figure that should not pass us by without acknowledgement.
It reflects improved underwriting discipline, better investment returns, and growing operational maturity,” he said.
Looking forward, he urged the industry to invest in professional capacity; embrace digital transformation not as a threat to the broker but as the broker’s most powerful tool; deepen the domestic insurance market; engage the regulator as a partner, not merely as an authority; and build a culture of integrity that was not just aspirational but operational.
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Source: www.myjoyonline.com
