Assessment of consumer protection in Rwandan insurance sector

Abstract

This study related to the “Assessment of Consumer Protection in Rwandan Insurance Sector” has been motivated by many complaints we receive and hear from various customers in connection with their request for indemnification, particularly from private insurance companies. Indeed, different customers raise their complaints stating especially that they are not satisfied with the compensation amount, the long time or period taken by insurers for the indemnification, and unbalanced or unsatisfactory contracts they conclude. With regard to above complaints, we have undertaken the initiative to carry out this study with the purpose of evaluation or assessment of consumer protection in insurance sector. Therefore, after the identification of the existing Rwandan legal and institutional frameworks related to consumer protection, we made an assessment by comparison with international standards or benchmarks. The referred standards or benchmarks were those established by the World Bank given the responsibility of the latter in the guidance or management of financial institutions. Given the fact that the protection of consumers requires the existing of efficient and effective legal and institutional frameworks, our assessment focused on the two (2) respective aspects. Concerning the assessment of the legal framework, we have found out that, on the one hand, the Rwandan legislation in place comprises interesting consumer protecting provisions. On the other hand however, we pointed out that the existing Rwandan legal and regulatory framework has important gaps to be made up. Consequently, the related recommendation has been to fill the various gaps identified in the existing legal and regulatory framework. About the assessment of the current Rwandan institutional framework, we noticed that Rwanda has important and various institutions in charge notably of consumer protection. However, it has been underlined that the roles of some of them are overlapping, while other institutions are inactive. For this reason, it has been recommended to clearly specify respective missions of different involved institutions, to sensitize consumer associations for playing their responsibilities, and to speed up the enactment of the law governing the forthcoming Competition and Consumer Protection Regulatory Body.