Acting SIC MD breaks silence

Business News of Thursday, 5 February 2015

Source: Citifmonline.com

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The Acting Managing Director of SIC Insurance Company Limited, Kwei Mensah Ashidam has in an exclusive interview with Citi Business News dismissed suggestions that the company is currently going through financial challenges.

This comes after a non-bank financial institution, Ivory Finance, secured a court order, empowering them to access SIC’s accounts to take out all monies owed them.

SIC guaranteed an Italconstruct International Limited project, but the company has since been unable to pay its lenders, Ivory Finance which later secured the garnishee order.

Following the development , the former MD of SIC Insurance, Mrs. Doris Awo Nkani was directed by the Board of the company to proceed on her accumulated annual leave to pave way for investigations into the situation.

According to Citi Business News sources, she has been subsequently dismissed and is being processed for court.

Kwei Mensah Ashidam in his first interview since assuming the role as acting MD refused to speak to the company’s handling of the former MD and said, ” SIC is still sitting and occupying its number one position , and we are still kicking we are still alive. We are not here to talk about personalities, it’s the institution SIC which is still there.”

He insists the company is consolidating its position as the market leader despite the current challenges. “SIC is firmly on its feet, it’s still continuing to be the market leader and we are still going to position ourselves and so what is expected of us from our numerous policy holders”, he added.

National Insurance Commission (NIC) has directed SIC to submit a comprehensive report on a credit guarantee they did for Italconstruct. This follows an earlier call on insurance companies to desist from underwriting credit guarantees since that was the preserve of banks.

The financial problems with Ghana’s largest insurer, SIC Insurance has worsened because of the multi-million dollar fraud case in the company currently being investigated by the Criminal Investigations Department of the Ghana Police Service.

Two top executives of SIC, the Deputy Managing Director in charge of Finance and Administration Musa Abdulai and the Head of Finance and Accounting Ken Acolatse have been implicated in the alleged theft of 1.1 million dollars and 700,000 cedis respectively.

The CID has served some financial institutions with a Court Order to help with ongoing investigations into the fraud case. According to Citi Business News sources, the two have been directed to report twice a week at the CID office to help in investigations.