Elliot Williams, the journalist who revolutionised media coverage of Ghana’s insurance industry from the late 1990s to date, has deservedly been recognised for his contributions to the growth and development of the West African Insurance Companies Association by the sub-regional grouping of insurers. The award was presented to Mr. Williams – who is a long-standing special consultant to B&FT in Ghana, among several roles he plays – on May 9, 2023 “in appreciation of your invaluable support to the growth and development of WAICA as a Development Partner”.
Indeed, Mr. Williams, in a career spanning over three decades, has been a pivotal advocate for WAICA and its role in the growth and development of the insurance industry across West Africa and the continent as a whole, providing similar support for the African Insurance Organization too. Instructively, Mr. Williams was the first journalist in Ghana to begin covering the Annual General Meetings and other special events of WAICA (and the AIO as well), wherever they were held on the continent.
It is instructive that only two journalists were conferred with this special award by WAICA; the other being Roland Okoro, the Publisher of Risk Shield – a specialised periodical magazine on the insurance industry published from Nigeria, the country where, incidentally, Mr. Williams himself started his sterling career.
Indeed, Mr. Williams has been an insurance industry practitioner himself in Nigeria, before taking his direct industry skills and experience into the specialised financial media in that country and subsequently, in Ghana, where he relocated to in 1996 along with VALUE magazine – which he worked for at the time.
He was a founding member of the transformative, but now defunct High Street Journal, which he used as a platform during the late 1990s to give Ghana’s insurance industry unprecedented exposure, creating pivotal market awareness. This coincided with the beginning of the transformation of Ghana’s insurance industry itself, in which Mr. Williams consequently played a key role.
His deep technical understanding of the industry, coupled with his close connections within an industry whose chieftains and regulators greatly admire and respect him, have enabled Mr. Williams to become the most technically accurate, reliable and, therefore, trusted source of information, analyses and perspectives on Ghana’s insurance industry.
The exemplary scope of his knowledge and reportage on the industry in Ghana subsequently persuaded WAICA, and indeed the AIO too, to leverage on him to expand their influence and consequent impact on a regional basis.
Furthermore, he produces the most in-depth annual analyses of Ghana’s insurance industry – his Annual Insurance Industry Surveys published in B&FT as a series covering general (non-life), life and insurance brokerage over three consecutive weeks each year, and which remain the most thorough, accurate and consequently sought-after analyses of Ghana’s insurance industry – outside of the periodic reports of the industry regulator, the National Insurance Commission itself.
