Showing posts with label Insurance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Insurance. Show all posts
Friday, June 28, 2013
New credit bureau launched
DUN and Bradstreet Credit Bureau Limited, an organisation that will provide comprehensive consumer credit information to customers in the country, has been launched in Accra.
The bureau receives information and processes them for lending and credit institutions to build borrowers’ credit profile and repayment records.
This form of reputational collateral has proven to be as reliable as the usual physical collateral demanded by lenders in support of credit.
Dun and Bradstreet was incorporated in Ghana in June 2008 and awarded a provisional Credit Bureau License from the Bank of Ghana in October 2010. After fulfilling the requirements of a provisional license, it received its final license in February, 2012.
The launch, which makes Dun and Bradstreet the third credit bureau in the country, is expected to increase competition within the Ghanaian credit market by providing credit providers with greater bureau choice and improved transparency for businesses and consumers.
Again, it is expected that as the availability of credit increases, businesses and consumers will enjoy more credit.
The government passed the Credit Reporting Act, 2007 (Act 726) not only to provide the necessary legal and regulatory mechanism for the licensing and operation of credit bureau, but also to protect the public against fraud.
The Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Mr Seth Tepker, in an address read on his behalf said the services of credit bureau therefore facilitate screening of applicants for credit, leading to cost reduction for the provider and enhances lender’s ability to predict default.
“Rapid growth has direct correlation with an increased risk of low repayment. Credit bureau provides the best mechanism to improving the rate of default and mitigating the threat to the financial system.”
‘Also the demand for consumer credit will increase lending to general increase in demand for goods and services thereby increasing growth in the economy,” he said.
He emphasised the need to promote convergence, integration and development of the entire financial service sector in order to exploit the full potential for effective financial intermediation and sustained growth.
He also announced that the government had developed the second phase of the Financial Sector Strategic Plan (FinSSP 1) that focused on strengthening all sub-sectors of the financial sector, including banking, securities, insurance, pensions and non-bank financial institutions, with implementation planned for next year.
Touted as a global leader in business information reports, the Managing Director of Dun and Bradstreet, Mr Evans Sarpong, said it would from its portfolio of global products and services offer a range of tools to help lenders manage their clients through the entire life cycle and better understand risks involved.
This, he said, included instant notification when changes occurred within a customer portfolio and tools needed to improve the quality of customer data.
“In order to provide responsible access to credit for businesses and consumers, it is important for banks and other credit providers to have access to globally proven alternatives to determine the credit worthiness of potential borrowers,” he said.
The Chief Executive Officer of Dun and Bradstreet, Mr Miguel Llenas, said the experience of credit bureaus in other countries showed that over time, borrowers stood to benefit from faster credit applications processing, faster disbursement of loans, fairer assessment and better adjusted quantum.
He said the organisation’s experience with government and private credit bureaus across the world had facilitated it in building the robust bureau for Ghana.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
From Civil Service to talented handmade ceramics making
Ceramics have become a vital part of decorative item as people strive to make their homes look appealing. Gloria Asare, the founder of a ceramic label, Glo Asa Universe Company Limited is one of such people and shares her story with Ama Amankwah Baafi
In a bid to satisfy her growing interest in using ceramics to make items that are useful and thoughtful, Madam Asare quit work as a civil servant. Not only does she design her own products at the Glo Asa workshop located in Kasoa but also does flowering.
She initially produced to sell on the local market until her brother suggested she tried exporting. That was when she registered her company in the year 2000, went through the export school and subsequently developed her company profile.
Ceramics are a class of materials made of non-metallic substances such as clay. Potters make ceramic items by molding, heating and then cooling to form objects such as pots.
THE BRAIN BEHIND THE BUSINESS
She told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS that it was challenging to start a business but she took inspiration from other business women who had made a career from doing things that they loved. “I loved designing so I actually wanted to go into clothing and boutique but I realised that when I started my house, anything I put there concerning flowers or pots people admired it. Sometimes I ended up selling them,” she recalled.
People encouraged her to go into ceramics so she decided to use the land she had acquired at Kasoa to work, due to disturbances from land guards. Now she has her own ceramic designs, also makes her own flowers and tries to introduce clients to what each pot can be used for, whether on the veranda, at the dining room, on the table, etc and employs 10 permanent staff but adds 20 more when she gets orders.
Doing her own business gives her the opportunity to work flexibly and hard hence she is able to concentrate on it without too many other responsibilities. “My designs are really different, the creative technique that I use to make them always interests people and I hope everyone who chooses one feels that they have something out of the ordinary.”
Her target market
Madam Asare has found her designs to appeal to people interested in owning things that really stand out. She has seasonal designs but sometimes repeats a design when people like them.
She chooses the events she attends carefully in order to find her target market and trade fairs in Nigeria are key events for her, as Nigeria is her biggest market. She also markets her products in Europe and America.
“I put a lot of energy into marketing my products. You can make beautiful things but no one can buy them if they do not know about them. Attending local and international fairs really make a difference to my marketing opportunities. People get in touch with me after such fairs to make orders.”
She also recognised that Europe and America have specific colour trend for each year and so she takes it into consideration when making ceramics, particularly when painting the ceramic. For such markets, she also decorates her ceramics with beads.
Time used in producing depends on the pot size and design. She said she washes the clay, mould it into ball to get it starchy, after which she starts moulding. It should also be allowed to dry well to ensure durability before designing starts or else they begin to crack.
She dismissed claims that ceramics are expensive to be purchased for interior decoration, but said the cost varies depending on the quality and size. According to her, there are many ways of making a selection of ceramic pots and vases, depending on the wall paint colour; size of the room; and the design on the vase may also match with the type of flowers placed in it.
However, she cautioned that if one wishes to place ceramic pots in the garden, then the quality of the pots would certainly matter because these pots need to be highly durable and weather resistant.
SUCCESSES AND CHALLENGES
Though she has no awards yet, she is happy she has made significant investments. She now lives in her own house at a good location. Her products are highly appreciated outside Ghana and she has moved all the way to far away Calabar in Nigeria to market her products and can also be found on Google map.
Breakage is her major challenge. Cumbersome border controls make it difficult for her to honour an order. “Transporting my products within West Africa is difficult. At each point they offload all goods on board and because they not professionals, most of my products due to its delicate nature get broken. In fact, it is painful to lose a pot,” she complained.
Access to credit facilities is also difficult. She told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS she has not trained many Ghanaians yet because most of the youth see ceramic making as a difficult venture and so prefer flower arrangement. Yet, people in countries like Nigeria show interest to the extent that some non-governmental organisations contract her to teach the youth. Even at the recent trade fair in Lagos, five people approached her to showing interest to follow her to Ghana to train in ceramics.
She believes the Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA) is doing so much to support people in the creative sector, unlike their fellows in other countries who do not have that opportunity to get their goods freighted to any fair destination and stands secured for them.
Periodically, she undertakes training programmes to upgrade her skills and knowledge.
FUTURE PLANS
She hopes to put up an ultra modern showroom on her eight plots of land at Kasoa, where one can find anything ceramic. Above all, she will be working hard to move her business forward and hope to enjoy the challenges this will bring. She also has plans to further her education.
Hobbies
She enjoys cooking good food, taking good wine and having people around to converse with. She also loves to play lap top games.
Her advice to other women who aim to start their own businesses
She advised that they should be organised, work out their business plan before they begin, although things never go entirely to plan, they need to have things to aim for in order to succeed.
“There are poorly designed, poorly crafted, and unoriginal products in the market. If you want to create a product that has value, there are no shortcuts. So do not rush it. Take your time to make something original and you will feel rewarded even before your stuff starts selling,” she said. GB
In a bid to satisfy her growing interest in using ceramics to make items that are useful and thoughtful, Madam Asare quit work as a civil servant. Not only does she design her own products at the Glo Asa workshop located in Kasoa but also does flowering.
She initially produced to sell on the local market until her brother suggested she tried exporting. That was when she registered her company in the year 2000, went through the export school and subsequently developed her company profile.
Ceramics are a class of materials made of non-metallic substances such as clay. Potters make ceramic items by molding, heating and then cooling to form objects such as pots.
THE BRAIN BEHIND THE BUSINESS
She told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS that it was challenging to start a business but she took inspiration from other business women who had made a career from doing things that they loved. “I loved designing so I actually wanted to go into clothing and boutique but I realised that when I started my house, anything I put there concerning flowers or pots people admired it. Sometimes I ended up selling them,” she recalled.
People encouraged her to go into ceramics so she decided to use the land she had acquired at Kasoa to work, due to disturbances from land guards. Now she has her own ceramic designs, also makes her own flowers and tries to introduce clients to what each pot can be used for, whether on the veranda, at the dining room, on the table, etc and employs 10 permanent staff but adds 20 more when she gets orders.
Doing her own business gives her the opportunity to work flexibly and hard hence she is able to concentrate on it without too many other responsibilities. “My designs are really different, the creative technique that I use to make them always interests people and I hope everyone who chooses one feels that they have something out of the ordinary.”
Her target market
Madam Asare has found her designs to appeal to people interested in owning things that really stand out. She has seasonal designs but sometimes repeats a design when people like them.
She chooses the events she attends carefully in order to find her target market and trade fairs in Nigeria are key events for her, as Nigeria is her biggest market. She also markets her products in Europe and America.
“I put a lot of energy into marketing my products. You can make beautiful things but no one can buy them if they do not know about them. Attending local and international fairs really make a difference to my marketing opportunities. People get in touch with me after such fairs to make orders.”
She also recognised that Europe and America have specific colour trend for each year and so she takes it into consideration when making ceramics, particularly when painting the ceramic. For such markets, she also decorates her ceramics with beads.
Time used in producing depends on the pot size and design. She said she washes the clay, mould it into ball to get it starchy, after which she starts moulding. It should also be allowed to dry well to ensure durability before designing starts or else they begin to crack.
She dismissed claims that ceramics are expensive to be purchased for interior decoration, but said the cost varies depending on the quality and size. According to her, there are many ways of making a selection of ceramic pots and vases, depending on the wall paint colour; size of the room; and the design on the vase may also match with the type of flowers placed in it.
However, she cautioned that if one wishes to place ceramic pots in the garden, then the quality of the pots would certainly matter because these pots need to be highly durable and weather resistant.
SUCCESSES AND CHALLENGES
Though she has no awards yet, she is happy she has made significant investments. She now lives in her own house at a good location. Her products are highly appreciated outside Ghana and she has moved all the way to far away Calabar in Nigeria to market her products and can also be found on Google map.
Breakage is her major challenge. Cumbersome border controls make it difficult for her to honour an order. “Transporting my products within West Africa is difficult. At each point they offload all goods on board and because they not professionals, most of my products due to its delicate nature get broken. In fact, it is painful to lose a pot,” she complained.
Access to credit facilities is also difficult. She told the GRAPHIC BUSINESS she has not trained many Ghanaians yet because most of the youth see ceramic making as a difficult venture and so prefer flower arrangement. Yet, people in countries like Nigeria show interest to the extent that some non-governmental organisations contract her to teach the youth. Even at the recent trade fair in Lagos, five people approached her to showing interest to follow her to Ghana to train in ceramics.
She believes the Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA) is doing so much to support people in the creative sector, unlike their fellows in other countries who do not have that opportunity to get their goods freighted to any fair destination and stands secured for them.
Periodically, she undertakes training programmes to upgrade her skills and knowledge.
FUTURE PLANS
She hopes to put up an ultra modern showroom on her eight plots of land at Kasoa, where one can find anything ceramic. Above all, she will be working hard to move her business forward and hope to enjoy the challenges this will bring. She also has plans to further her education.
Hobbies
She enjoys cooking good food, taking good wine and having people around to converse with. She also loves to play lap top games.
Her advice to other women who aim to start their own businesses
She advised that they should be organised, work out their business plan before they begin, although things never go entirely to plan, they need to have things to aim for in order to succeed.
“There are poorly designed, poorly crafted, and unoriginal products in the market. If you want to create a product that has value, there are no shortcuts. So do not rush it. Take your time to make something original and you will feel rewarded even before your stuff starts selling,” she said. GB
Wednesday, December 05, 2012
Activa and Coface introduce credit insurance
Activa International Insurance Company (ACII) in partnership with Coface has introduced a credit protection insurance product into the market to insure companies against the risk of financial default by their clients both on the domestic market and for export.
A partnership agreement between the two companies has consequently been signed to that effect and the product is expected to fuel economic activity by facilitating access to bank loans for businesses in Ghana and to the receivables purchase facilities offered by banks.
Activa is a member of the Pan-African insurance group, Group Activa Assurance while the Coface Group is a worldwide leader in credit insurance.
The Managing Director of ACII Ghana, Mr Steve Kyerematen at the signing ceremony in Accra said the partnership is in line with series of innovations Activa had brought to the insurance market in Ghana.
He said Activa had provided a wide range of general insurance products and some niche products including Assets Mark III policy (a policy that combines 20 optional covers both personal and commercial lines including property, business interruption, liability and transit covers). Products like medical malpractice, clinical trials, directors and officers’ liability are also available.
Mr Kyerematen noted Ghana has done a lot to achieve lower middle income status and the nature and character of the economy is also evolving, especially with credit control, therefore the introduction of credit insurance is a further step in this direction of an emerging economic activity.
Also, he said the partnership gives Ghana an opportunity to be placed on international financial market and that the partnership is an additional impetus for companies to look to Ghana looking at the insurance market.
“We at Activa are committed to providing credit insurance security, world-class services and solutions to clients in the insurance market. Quiet recently we were involved in sponsoring a road safety programme as an element of our corporate social responsibility. We as the insurance sub-sector will continue to contribute our quota in projecting the image of Ghana and improving the economy,” he added.
The Director General, Coface Services Maghreb, Mr Jean-Marc Pons said Coface choose to partner Activa because of its expert and world-class insurance services and coverage across 34 countries in Africa.
He said Coface helps companies evaluate and mitigate risks by proposing its assessments of country, sectoral and credit risk. The credit control insurance provides a solution to protect a company against customer default at any time and will be able to redeem in case of customer default.
The Regional Sales Manager, Maghreb, West and Central Africa of Coface, Mr Bagneki Hugues Olivier explained since trade receivables is an important asset of a company, the credit insurance provides a protection as companies can use it as a risk management tool to rectify bad debt collection.
A partnership agreement between the two companies has consequently been signed to that effect and the product is expected to fuel economic activity by facilitating access to bank loans for businesses in Ghana and to the receivables purchase facilities offered by banks.
Activa is a member of the Pan-African insurance group, Group Activa Assurance while the Coface Group is a worldwide leader in credit insurance.
The Managing Director of ACII Ghana, Mr Steve Kyerematen at the signing ceremony in Accra said the partnership is in line with series of innovations Activa had brought to the insurance market in Ghana.
He said Activa had provided a wide range of general insurance products and some niche products including Assets Mark III policy (a policy that combines 20 optional covers both personal and commercial lines including property, business interruption, liability and transit covers). Products like medical malpractice, clinical trials, directors and officers’ liability are also available.
Mr Kyerematen noted Ghana has done a lot to achieve lower middle income status and the nature and character of the economy is also evolving, especially with credit control, therefore the introduction of credit insurance is a further step in this direction of an emerging economic activity.
Also, he said the partnership gives Ghana an opportunity to be placed on international financial market and that the partnership is an additional impetus for companies to look to Ghana looking at the insurance market.
“We at Activa are committed to providing credit insurance security, world-class services and solutions to clients in the insurance market. Quiet recently we were involved in sponsoring a road safety programme as an element of our corporate social responsibility. We as the insurance sub-sector will continue to contribute our quota in projecting the image of Ghana and improving the economy,” he added.
The Director General, Coface Services Maghreb, Mr Jean-Marc Pons said Coface choose to partner Activa because of its expert and world-class insurance services and coverage across 34 countries in Africa.
He said Coface helps companies evaluate and mitigate risks by proposing its assessments of country, sectoral and credit risk. The credit control insurance provides a solution to protect a company against customer default at any time and will be able to redeem in case of customer default.
The Regional Sales Manager, Maghreb, West and Central Africa of Coface, Mr Bagneki Hugues Olivier explained since trade receivables is an important asset of a company, the credit insurance provides a protection as companies can use it as a risk management tool to rectify bad debt collection.
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