Insurance supervisors meet in Nadi

[August 5, 2013]. Regulators and supervisors of the Insurance Sectors from Central Banks around the Pacific and Timor Leste have today begun a five-day workshop at Novotel in Nadi.

The workshop is expected to center around the theme “Enhancing Supervisors Capacity to Promote Well Regulated and Inclusive Markets”, and was opened this morning by recently appointed UNDP Pacific Center Manager Peter Batchelor.(picture attached)

In his key note address, Mr Batchelor emphasized the importance of the skills to be gained from the weeklong training.

“I understand some of you attended the last year’s workshop and benefitted from the training. I am confident this workshop would continue to enable all of you to build the requisite skill sets for carrying out effective off-site supervision and on-site inspection with specific focus on market conduct aspects. In addition, this workshop will enable you all to identify the appropriate regulatory frameworks for development of inclusive insurance.

Mr Batchelor said; “In the Pacific, insurance penetration is extremely low and generally only held by wealthy companies and individuals.  The largest proportion of the population; those who are most vulnerable to shocks and suffer the most if they occur, do not have access to any insurance products – at least not yet.

“This illustrates the importance of insurance within the overall development scenario. If we are to overcome poverty, we will need to strengthen the ability of the most vulnerable to stand on their own feet; to take charge of their own destiny. This is what will make or break a success in development. Sustainable and real results can only be achieved when people themselves are put in a position where they can take charge of their own development process.”

Participants include Insurance Supervisors and Regulators from the Central Bank of the Solomon Islands, the Central Bank of Samoa, Reserve Bank of Vanuatu, Bank of Papua New Guinea, Office of the Insurance Commission’s (PNG), the Reserve Bank of Fiji and the Central Bank of Timor Leste.

The workshop was organized by the Pacific Financial Inclusion Programme (PFIP) in partnership with Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI), the Pacific Islands Working Group (PIWG) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The Pacific Financial Inclusion Programme (PFIP) is a joint programme of the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) with additional funding support from the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) and the European Union/Africa, Caribbean and Pacific Microfinance Framework Programme (EU/ACP).

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