The Insurance Institute of Zimbabwe will roll out several training, education and capacity building programmes this year as part of strategic initiatives to enhance the industry.
IIZ president, Ms Clementine Chinyuku, said this during a recent inaugural Insurance Executives Breakfast Meeting in Harare, noting that they remained firmly focused on delivering on their mandate.
“These are to strengthen professional competence, promote ethical conduct, and build institutional and human capital capacity. However, we are equally clear that this mandate cannot be fulfilled in isolation.
“It must be delivered in partnership with you as industry leadership, as well as other like-minded institutions. It is from this position of collaboration and shared responsibility that we wish to introduce several strategic initiatives that will define our engagement with you in 2026,” she said.
In terms of organisational skills gap intervention, effective immediately, all IIZ-compliant member organisations were invited to identify and submit specific skills and knowledge gaps within their teams, whether technical, managerial, regulatory, operational, or leadership-related.
Ms Chinyuku said once these gaps are identified, the IIZ will deploy expert facilitators directly to the organisations to deliver a targeted half-day training programme, at no professional cost.
“This intervention is customised, workplace-based, practical and measurable. This is a deliberate institutional investment by the Institute into industry capacity,” she added.
“We are bringing professional development closer to the workplace, ensuring relevance and responding directly to real operational challenges.”
She said their conviction was simple: professional excellence must be practical, accessible, and responsive.
On the expansion of fully-fledged professional qualifications, Ms Chinyuku said in the same spirit of strategic responsiveness, they will be introducing, in partnership with the National University of Science and Technology, specialised, fully-fledged, examinable professional courses.
“That adds to our existing menu of professional offerings. These qualifications are designed to produce specialised insurance professionals with depth, rigour and global relevance,” she said.
“These programmes include Certificate in Insurance Board Leadership, Advanced Diploma in General Insurance, Advanced Diploma in Agricultural and Climate Risk, Advanced Diploma in Life Insurance, Advanced Diploma in Pension Funds Management, Advanced Diploma in Reinsurance and Advanced Diploma in Risk Management.”
She said the qualifications are professionally rigorous and examinable, aligned with regulatory, market and governance realities as well as structured for working professionals and designed for immediate and long-term industry impact.
Ms Chinyuku said their strategic ambition is clear: to position Zimbabwe as a leading producer of insurance expertise — not only for the domestic market, but for the region and the global insurance marketplace.
“This is how we future-proof the industry. This is how we build credibility, competitiveness and resilience. We have also repositioned and repackaged the IIZ C-Suite Summit to be more outcome-driven and executive-focused,” she said.
“The Summit will no longer be merely a discussion forum. It is now a strategic exchange platform where executives shape industry thought leadership, influence policy and regulatory alignment, share strategic insights and drive future-ready leadership.”
She said the future of insurance professionalism in Zimbabwe will not be built by institutions alone, nor by regulation working independently, but through leadership, partnership and intentional investment in people.
FBC Insurance managing director, Ms Alice Shumba, who has been in the insurance industry for the last 23 years, said deliberations helped open her eyes to document the history of the insurance industry.
“We take risks every day and sometimes we take it for granted that we have not documented things that have gone wrong, we have not documented the successes in the industry and it is very important for the industry to know where we came from, what to avoid, what challenges to take up so that we do not forget what makes us as an industry,” she said.
“The insurance industry is very vulnerable to risk of failure due to poor underwriting, and as such, we need to document those stories so that we do not have a repeat of such systemic failures that we are prone to.”
She said there are legends in the industry who can guide them on how to do things right and develop the industry.
Ms Shumba said coaching in the industry was required, but they have not been deliberate about it.
“It does open our eyes that going forward we are going to be deliberate about coaching, about mentorship and about passing on the knowledge that has always resided in people’s heads and not documented.”-herald
