Seventh annual banking, insurance expo for next month

Feb 13, 2015

Preparations for the 7th Annual Banking, Finance and Insurance Expo are underway. The expo brings together financial service providers and customers to a consolidated platform to discuss and share insights about the Uganda’s financial industry.


By Vision Reporter

Preparations for the 7th Annual Banking, Finance and Insurance Expo are underway.

The expo brings together financial service providers and customers to a consolidated platform to discuss and share insights about the Uganda’s financial industry.


This year’s expo which will bring together banks and insurance companies in a move to enhance public awareness on a wider spectrum of the general financial services. It will also enable the public understand and harness the different services the industry offers as well as creating avenues for service providers to understand customer needs.

A statement from Royalway Media, the event organizers, explains that Uganda’s financial sector is hampered by the challenges of low service uptake of financial services due limited knowledge and complexities in the financial sector.

According to David Sempala, the Royalway Media Chief Executive Officer, the event scheduled to run from  March 26 to 28, 2015 at Lugogo (UMA) Exhibition Hall, aims at raising the bar for financial awareness across the industry and create an avenue to define financial products in a simple manner outside normal banking halls.

This year’s theme is: “Leveraging on digital financial platforms to reach and retain consumers.”
“Boosting financial inclusion has to be preceded by empowering people with knowledge through regular awareness about the dynamics of the industry, that way, the sector will attract a critical mass to sustain the growing industry. This is what the expo seeks to achieve,” Sempala added.

There are 30 insurance companies, 12 health membership organizations (HMOs), one reinsurance broker, 27 insurance brokerage firms and 18 loss assessors/Adjustors that have been licensed in the country.

However, the insurance penetration rate in Uganda is estimated at 0.8%, compared to Kenya’s 3.5%, Rwanda’s 2.3%, Tanzania’s 1.1% and South Africa’s 14.2%. Uganda’s score is low and awareness gaps are part of the key contributions to this economic shortcoming, according to Sempala.

The state of banking in Uganda

In banking, there are 24 commercial banks, 3 Micro-Deposit Taking Institutions and at least 49 Microfinance institutions in Uganda; despite having an adult population of about 18 million people, the banking population in Uganda is estimated at only 5.5 million, yet , of those many people have multiple bank accounts.

However, the number of Ugandans accessing financial services from both formal and informal financial institutions increased from 28% in 2009 to 54% in 2013, according to a FinScope III survey.

Thus, the population of financially excluded adults in Uganda reduced from 4.3 million (30% of adults in 2009) to 2.6 million (15% in 2013), but still the change is not significant enough to be celebrated.

Aware of such challenges, the expo will create an avenue where financial service providers and consumers will meet, network and map out the future directions of the industry’s financial development goals.

Exhibitors to this year’s expo will include but not limited to; banks, insurance companies, regulators, microfinance institutions, dealers in technology that facilitate the sector, investment consultants, pension funds, Forex Bureaus, leasing companies, individual money lenders and money transfer service providers.

 

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