ACAPS (Morocco)

Definition

ACAPS, the Autorité de Contrôle des Assurances et de la Prévoyance Sociale, is Morocco's independent authority supervising insurance and reinsurance companies, insurance intermediaries (agents and brokers) and social welfare bodies such as pension and health coverage schemes. Created by Law 64-12 and operational since 2016, it replaced a directorate of the Ministry of Finance. ACAPS licenses intermediaries, monitors their solvency and conduct, handles policyholder complaints and issues sector regulation, including circulars on distribution and policyholder protection. The underlying statute is Morocco's Insurance Code (Law 17-99) and its implementing texts. Morocco is not part of the CIMA zone that governs fourteen Francophone African countries, so its rules on premiums, cancellation and distribution are its own.

What you need to know

For an English-speaking broker or insurer looking at Morocco, the first point is that the market operates in French and Arabic under a Moroccan code, with ACAPS as licensing authority for brokers: professional training and examination, suitable premises and a financial guarantee are among the conditions, and continuing obligations cover reporting, conduct of business and anti-money-laundering. The market is one of Africa's largest, with compulsory motor, life and savings distributed largely through bancassurance, and growing demand for complementary health cover since universal health insurance was extended.

Data protection is handled separately by the CNDP under Law 09-08: collecting and using phone numbers for WhatsApp messages must follow its notification and consent rules, especially for prospecting. ACAPS focuses on the fairness of information given to clients, the traceability of advice and the clear identification of the intermediary in all communications.

A brokerage deploying WhatsApp in Morocco therefore identifies the firm and its licence in its messages, keeps conversations at firm level, separates service messages (renewal notices, certificates, claims) from prospecting messages subject to consent, and handles complaints traceably. ORIS provides the shared inbox, Meta-approved templates and CSV export that support this. The relevant contrast for a Southern African reader is with FAIS and the FSCA: similar goals, a civil-law framework and no equivalent of the RE5 exam. See the country pages and the compliance hub.

Concrete example

A Casablanca brokerage receives a WhatsApp complaint about a delayed motor claim settlement. The message is classified as a complaint in the shared inbox, an acknowledgement with a file number goes out the same day, and the brokerage chases the insurer. If the client escalates to ACAPS, the full dated history of the exchange is available in seconds rather than reconstructed from a personal phone.