Tanzania Industry Sector Member Posts Pre-Tax Profit

The Daily News has recently reported a company posting of pre-tax profit in the Tanzania industry sector for the Tanzania National Reinsurance Corporation Limited (TAN-RE), in the amount of TSH 4.2 billion for their 2008 financial year.

“It is quite a good performance compared to the preceding year,” said the TAN-RE Managing Director, Steven Oluoch, in an interview with the ‘Daily News.’
 
The original purpose of TAN-RE was to execute a reinsurance business in Tanzania that would cover all non-life insurance business including marine and aviation business.

The portion of the business covering all life assurance, including pensions, that was outlined in the Insurance Act, first began its operations in 2004.

Tanzania currently hosts approximately 20 insurance companies which directly write their insurance business; however, to date, TAN-RE is the only locally registered reinsurer.

After four years of operations, TAN-RE was accorded a first time domestic currency claims paying ability rating of A+ and an international currency claims paying ability of BB- by Global Credit Rating company of South Africa (GCR) in August 2008.

According to Mr. Oluoch in the Daily News report, this favorable rating helped to reaffirm the company’s acceptability as a quality reinsurance security across Africa.

Following the receipt of this rating, the overall reinsurance premium writings from the company’s various markets witnessed significant grown significantly in 2008 and 2009.

Mr. Oluoch went on to indicate that, after only five years of operations, TAN-RE had managed to successfully expanded its operations across the African continent throughout the countries of Algeria, Angola, Cameroon, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Libya, Madagascar and Mauritius. Others are Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Seychelles, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Tanzania. 

“As of March 31 2009,” said Mr. Oluoch, “TAN-RE is writing reinsurance business and providing capacity and technical services to a total of 93 companies in 26 countries in Africa.”

According to Mr. Oluoch, following the recent resolution that was made by the company’s shareholders at the 6th Annual General Meeting, TAN-RE has decided to issue 100 percent of its retained earnings as bonus shares to existing shareholders, which means a total of TZS 1,561,795,084 will be issued.

In addition, Mr. Oluoch indicated that TAN-RE was looking to make the company’s paid up share capital position reach its target of TZS 10 billion before December 31, 2009 by utilizing a second share call with its shareholders.

Mr. Oluoch also indicated in the Daily News report that he sees the challenges that TAN-RE is likely to face in the coming year as being both the global financial crisis and its impact on local and international insurance and reinsurance markets.

Nevertheless, Mr. Oluoch said that the future seems bright for both TAN-RE and the Tanzania’s insurance industry in general, especially if the market is able to continue enhancing underwriting standards as it has been predicted to do.