Accra, July 20, GNA-The Coronavirus Pandemic apart from the inherent fear and panic has also brought in innovations that will dictate the pace of development in succeeding years.
Digitisation
These days everything is going digital, everything is online and COVID-19 has made the online business and online way of doing things even more prominent.
Ghana’s Vice President Dr Mahamadu Bawumia is championing a digitization agenda with the view of reducing or bringing to the minimum human interactions when accessing a service.
Benefits
Digitisation among other benefits is aimed at reducing corruption as there will be limited human interactions.
Among the services that have become digitized is the Motor Insurance, before January 2020, clients went to Insurance Companies or Agents to acquire mandatory vehicle insurance stickers.
Motor Insurance is mandatory in Ghana to protect and serve as support for the vulnerable who may suffer an accident through no fault of theirs and become victims.
In the past, the Motor Traffic and Transport Department of the Ghana Police Service arrested vehicles without the Insurance stickers pasted on their windscreens, but more often than not, during accidents, they were sometimes shocked to realize that some of the insurance stickers pasted were fake.
Steps of NIC
To deal with the fake insurance stickers, the National Insurance Commission started a digitized system that checked the validity of a vehicle insurance.
The system which has become known as the Motor Insurance Database was implemented on January 1, 2020, and is providing a centralised system from which security agencies and the public including; passengers of vehicles could check the validity of vehicle insurance instantaneously.
Vehicle users can simply dial *920*57# to ascertain the validity of their vehicle insurance.
The National Insurance Commission says “The objective of the introduction of the Motor Insurance Database is to curb the menace of vehicles with fake motor insurance stickers plying our roads, thus endangering lives and property.”
With the digitization of motor insurance in Ghana, all insurance policies, which now have key security features, have been synchronized to a national database, which can be accessed simply with any mobile phone by the insured, the police, and the general public.
The NIC says the first point of verifying the authenticity of a vehicle insurance is that upon the purchase of a valid Motor Insurance Policy, the insured will receive a text message to confirm its validity.
The Insurance Commission said the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) code also allows passengers to verify if a vehicle has valid insurance before they board, and it is the same process, which the Police will also use to check the validity of a motor insurance.
For insurance stickers issued prior to the deadline, the National Insurance Commission allows all insurance companies to upload details of such policies on the national insurance database to enable the Police and the public check their authentications, just as new policies.
The successful implementation of the Motor Insurance Database is another feather in the cap of the government’s digitization drive, which has seen many state institutions going digital.
For vehicle users the Motor Insurance Database gives an opportunity to check the validity of the insurance of the vehicle used, either commercial vehicles such as taxis, tro-tro, uber, bolts etc.
And for private vehicle users, be sure that you are buying the right insurance.
It is just a text message away.
