Insurance company responsiveness and business success continuity in Uganda

Abstract

Insurance companies are mainly known for their role of hedging against risk covering an individual or even a business. In Uganda, insurance related to business activities is not common. Despite this fact, there are businesses that have insurance policy for their operations. It has however not been clear whether the responsiveness of the insurance companies in Uganda help these businesses subscribed to them to succeed and continue normally in their operations. This necessitated a research study to be conducted to establish whether responsiveness of insurance companies in their operations was useful and had significant influence onto success and continuity of businesses operating in Uganda. The main ingredients of responsiveness of insurance companies and their success as well as continuity were also assessed. The research was based on a sample of 201 respondents from the insurance companies as well as from the business community. The results indicated that responsiveness of insurance companies in Uganda mainly involved timely payment of claims, effective customer care and proper guidance given to the insurance clients in all matters that relate to insurance policies. Business success and continuity was also found to mainly entail sales level and trend, profit level and trend as well as business recovery from environmental shocks. Correlation results indicated that responsiveness of insurance companies is positively associated with business success and continuity though the association was reported to be fairly weak (r = 0.341). This weak association was further manifested in the results of regression where it is reported that responsiveness of insurance companies has significant influence onto success and continuity of businesses in Uganda though this influence is only up to 7.7% of the changes in success and continuity of businesses in Uganda. This therefore means that success and continuity of businesses in Uganda is influenced by the responsiveness of insurance companies though to a greater extent, it is influenced by other factors which are not responsiveness of insurance companies.

Key words: Risk Management, Profitability, Sales level