Impact of COVID-19 on performance of insurance agents system in Uganda
Abstract
The objective of this study was to assess the impact of covid-19 on the insurance agents sector
in Uganda. Therefore, it aims to find out whether age, gender, education level, employment
statues, type of insurance sold, period of employment, Employment Company, challenges
selling insurance, reach to new clients, negative effect on revenue, number of insurance policies
sold, online tools adequate in creation of trust, Covid-19 effect on sales and collection of
premiums have a significant relationship on whether the online tools increased the number of
insurance uptake. It used primary data and was collected using an email questionnaire on a
sample of 72 respondents from different insurance companies; the analysis was done using
frequency distribution, Pearson chi-square, and logistic regression.
In the results, all the respondents had a tertiary education level (100%). More than half of the
respondents (55.56%) were part-time agents. The period of employment of more than a half of
the respondents was before Covid-19(61.11%). Slightly more than a half of the respondents
(52.78%) sell non-life insurance policies while those that sell life insurance policies are
33.33%. 13.89% of the respondents sell both insurance policies.
In the bi-variate analysis, it was found that age, gender, online tools adequate in creation of
trust and employment status, whose p-values were less than 0.1(p<0.1)
In the multivariate analysis, the factors that significantly influenced an impact of covid-19 on
insurance agents were; part-time employees were 87% less likely to be negatively affected by
Covid-19 pandemic than insurance agents working full-time were (OR = 0.13). Agents who
felt that online tools were adequate in creation of trust were 93% less than those who felt that
online tools were inadequate in creation of trust (OR = 0.07).
The findings indicate the need to; (i) provide better digital capabilities that are in a better
position to respond to communications, service and create trust. (ii) Give some form advances
to agency force to help agents with some level of disposable income as they perform duties.