MEET SHABANA, ONE OF NICO'S LONGEST SERVING EMPLOYEE
19/May/2011

At age 23 on October 4 1978, Max Shabana joined NICO Insurance Company Limited as a clerk in the motor underwriting department of the General Insurance division. He has fond memories of how they used to operate in those old days.

"Except for the accounts department which was operating in Makata house along the Haile Selassie Road, all the departments of the General Insurance, including the Head office of the company, were housed in Chibisa House.

"The other division of the company was life and pensions. Mr Mc Naughton, an expatriate was the general manager of the whole company with the late Aleke Banda as the chairman," says Shabana.

He has first hand information of how the company has evolved over the years to become what it is today, explaining that up until the late 90s, the main departments of the General Insurance Division were fire, motor, accident, marine and claims.

Shabana also vividly remembers that around 1982, NICO merged with Guardian Assurance Company with the name NICO retained. Mr Wright from Guardian was the general Manager of the company after the merger, says Shabana.

"The company had other expatriate general Managers after Mr Wright up until the mid 90s when the position of the general Manager was localised and Mr Felix Mlusu was appointed the first Malawian general Manager," he explains.

Mlusu is now the managing director of NICO Holdings Limited, the parent company of NICO Life Insurance Company Limited, NICO Technologies Limited, NBS Bank Limited, NICO Insurance Tanzania Limited, NIKO Insurance Uganda Limited, NICO Insurance Zambia Limited, NICO Asset Managers Limited and SFG Insurance Private Limited.

Shabana has over the years, benefited from the company's sound training policy for its employees.

"In 1983, I was put on a two year management training programme. After completion of the programme, I became an underwriting technician supervisor in 1991," he narrates, earning a promoting in January 1995 to the position of an assistance branch Manager at their Lilongwe branch.

After working in that position for six years, Shabana; earned a promotion in June 2001. He assumed the position of an underwriting Manager and immediately got transferred from Lilongwe to Blantyre.

By assuming the position of underwriting Managers, Shabana was glad to become part of the management team that "turned around the loss making company into a profit making one".

"I have held this position to this day although I am now working on a contract basis as I retired in June 2010," he says. Shabana has a reason to smile for many good things the company has done for him as well as other employees.

He cherishes the company's sound training policy that has enabled him to acquire a wealth of experience for the job he has been doing for the past 33 years.

"NICO has had a sound training policy for its members of staff. The company has trained its staff in technical and managerial fields, both locally and internationally, and I happen to be one of the beneficiaries of the unparalleled training policy," he says.

He cites in 1995 when he was sent to a college of insurance in Bombay, India where he attended the internaiiorial general insurance technical course for seven weeks.

In 2001, he says he was sent for a four weeks training course in Reinsurance and engineering insurance at Munich Re, Johannesburg and proceeded to the University of Cape Town, graduate school of business where he attended a three weeks intensive programme for management development. Nothing could be better than this, he says.

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