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.