One of the leading insurance companies in the country, Globalrisk Insurance Company (GIC) – SL Ltd adhered to its policies with customers nationwide. According to investigations by this medium with its customers and other institutions concerned, the operations of the company is fully legal and in line with the regulations of the land.
With various publications that were very eye capturing, this medium was moved to investigate if GIC was duly incorporated as a limited liability company under the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and was authorised by the Sierra Leone Insurance Commission (SLIC) to carry out its insurance business, this was fully verified with all authentic documents which indicated that the company is a fully recognised legal entity.
According to investigations, the Gobalrisk Insurance Company has life insurance products which include; ‘Gentri’ Assurance Plan, Guaranteed Education Assurance Plan among others, and the primary objective of the ‘Gentri’ Assurance Plan is to ensure that the policyholder lives a good life by affording loan facility to the customers to acquire basic household assets, save for the future, as well as providing benefit for dependants in the event death of the customer; and the Guaranteed Education Assurance Plan helps customers save towards future education of their children, as well as providing yearly financial support to the child up to 18 years in the event that the customer dies before then. The customer base of the company cut across the nation with various institutions and Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).
This medium further gathered that the company’s loan scheme is in full operations and that they have started granting loans over a year ago to its customers since 2021 and the company has disbursed over Five Hundred Million Leones (Le 500, 000,000) to its customers nationwide. All documentations were inspected and verified with customers to which loan has been granted to meet their urgent and desperate needs.
One of the customer of the GIC, Mohamed Konteh disclosed to the medium that there is qualifying period for customers to benefit from the company’s loan scheme which is 12 months of being a fully paid up customer, and the interested individual must send in a formal application to the company for the application of a loan. After this stage all duly instituted processes would be followed in order to meet due diligence for the loan to be granted.
This medium went through the file that has names, addresses, institutions and contact numbers of customers that have benefitted from the loan scheme as the procedures were consistent in line with their policies and also opportune to also go through the files of deceased customers that families have reported to the company and verified records shows that the company has paid over Fifty Million Leones (Le 50,000,000) as benefit to families of deceased customers nationwide in the public view of the institutions of the deceased.
It was revealed to this medium that one of its volunteer marketer, Michael James over-marketed the Company’s products which the company has ratified with several customers as some of the customers have understood the company’s policy on loan and are benefiting from it.
According to SalamatuLamin a teacher, they have visited the company’s headquarters at 2 Wellington Street, Freetown to get proper information of the GIC policy as some of her colleagues were about to withdraw due to the marketer’s information to them, not knowing that a customer will have access to loan after a year’s contribution, she however confirmed that the loans were granted after they had completed the one year period criteria.
The Chief Executive Officer of the company, Mr. Paul Oparah stated that he is poised to do more to enhance the lives of civil servants so that they can improve their full potentials and achieve their dreams to live a comfortable life with their families, as this is almost impossible to achieve in their daily life considering the worldwide economic trends.
Paul Oparah furthered stated that the government cannot do it alone and therefore encouraged the private sector to design services that will uplift the standard of life of the citizens, adding, “GIC as an institution is bent to improve the lives of all Sierra Leoneans that are eligible to take any of their policies”.
