SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This work attempts to find out whether the Insurance supervisory laws in Ghana have the capacity to satisfactorily achieve the purposes of regulating insurance companies in Ghana. It examines how our laws deal with the means and ends of regulatory activity, the organisation of the insurance supervisory service, the necessary control measures over insurance companies and the enforcement of the insurance supervisory laws. The work begins by examining certain preliminary issues, such as the scope and intended use of the work, the nature of the insurance industry in Ghana, and the motivation for researching this subject, which lies in the importance of insurance and insurance regulation in Ghana, and in the relatively little amount of research on this subject, both generally, and in relation to Ghana specifically. Chapter One considers the question as to whether our laws make for the establishment of a competent and capable insurance supervisory service, examining the background, motivation and morale of the members of the service, the service's conception of the function and importance of insurance, and of the means and ends of regulation. In considering the question of the service's conception of the purposes of regulation which, in the opinion of the present writer, is a subscription to current, popular thought on the issue, the writer propounds a general theory on the purposes of regulating insurance companies, in view of a finding that current theory on the issue confuses means and ends in certain cases, and also confuses general considerations for purposes of regulation in others. This theory is meant to be a general philosophical framework for the formulation of regulatory measures. The Chapter ends with a critical appraisal of the service's capabilities, qualities and ideas. Chapter two looks at the control measures which exist over insurance companies, and attempts an ordered exposee of the various forms of control, devising a suitable categorisation of these controls for the purposes of the discussion. It also attempts to decipher the purposes behind the various controls. Chapter three is a critical appraisal of the control measures, including their modes of enforcement, trying to throw a searchlight on whatever deficiencies may exist in them, and trying to consider the effect that such deficiencies may have on the capacity of our laws to satisfactorily achieve their purposes. Recommendations for curing whatever deficiencies exist in the laws are made as such deficiencies are diagnosed. The chapter ends by examining the apparent root causes of the deficiencies which exist in the laws. In Chapter four, following the extensive recommendations for reform made in the previous chapter, the writer proposes an insurance code to embody the new provisions, together with those parts of the existing legislation which are to be retained. The writer does not suggest additional legislation, since there is already an avalanche of insurance supervisory legislation. Only the general framework and pattern of the code are put forward. No attempt is made at actually drafting the proposed code. That is not our task. Chapter five, which contains the conclusions to the work, considers whether, in the light of the revelations of the preceding discussion, our laws can be said to have the capacity to satisfactorily achieve the purposes of regulation in Ghana. We end by looking at the future of statutory regulation of insurance companies in Ghana.