January 25, 2021
In certain developing markets, insurance and bank products have been sold together for many years without there being any specific legislation to govern the conduct of banks that sell insurance products.
Within the east Africa region, we have recently seen Kenya adopt rules that would regulate Kenyan banks offering insurance products, which were previously regulated as insurance brokers instead of bancassurance agents or operators.
The Tanzania Insurance Regulatory Authority (TIRA) officially launched the insurance (bancassurance) regulations that were published in the united republic of Tanzania under government notice no 216 of 2019 on March 15th,2019. This came as a step by the regulator in an attempt to increase insurance penetration which stands at 0.53% for the year 2018, representing a decline in comparison with the penetration ratio of 0.54% and 0.61% for the years 2017 and 2016 respectively (source: TIRA’s annual insurance market performance report for year ended 31st December 2018).