NBSSI initiates talks to develop Insurance for SMEs

The Executive Director of the Board for the National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI), Mrs. Kosi Yankey-Ayeh, has indicated her resolve to initiate talks with financial institutions to develop affordable insurance and financing products for Micro, Small and Medium scale enterprises in the country.

According to her, this will help boost the growth of these businesses and enjoin them to more insurance products.

“Come up with options for access to finance, products that banks can adopt and work with insurance companies; and as much as possible, we are interacting with the banks to give their feedbacks and their inputs to see if these products that we work with the consultants and MSMEs put on the demand and supply cycle would make sense to them and how to actually implement it”.

The project supported by MasterCard Foundation Young Africa Works programme will facilitate access to funding from the financial sector and enrollment of businesses unto various micro insurance products.

“So our partnership with MasterCard Foundation would allow us to really implement and ensure that a lot of financial institutions buy into this so we can create more opportunities for access to finance”.

Findings by the NBSSI  Board according to Mrs. Kosi Ayeh, has revealed that, most businesses have had to resort to more conventional means for soliciting for financial aid, a process she describes as unfortunate as most businesses are unable to access these funds.

“I think there are a lot of different findings that approximately twenty, twenty nine percent of people were getting their access to finance from financial institutions. That shows you what’s happening to the close to 70 percent; that means they are not really accessing funding through the traditional means of going to banks.

“So, there are people who are going to money lenders, there are those who are getting from friends and family; so that means if you don’t have a family or a friend who can give you, then you can’t do much and I think we need to move away from that if we want to accelerate the growth of businesses and support the businesses to do well”.

Meanwhile, the National Project Coordinator of the ILO SCORE Project, Mr. Samuel Onoma has noted that a MoU signed with the Management Development and Productivity Institute is in line with Government’s plans to formalize the MSMEs sector.

“This initiative is so critical because it brings to the doorsteps of SMEs the support that ILO has that they can access anytime. This support for us means a lot to all enterprises including those that are in distress so even with this COVID-19, ILO has developed a module that is called business continuity planning that is aimed at putting in place measures that make enterprises resilient and able to bounce back from the crises and looking at the situation MDPI is an International agency that has all the requisite skills and capabilities to deliver a top-notch training. So SMEs who would access this support are assured of getting the best quality for their productivity,” he said.