L-R: Eddie Efekoha, President, Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria (CIIN); Tope Smart, Chairman, Nigeria Insurers Association (NIA); O. Sunday Thomas, Deputy Commissioner-Technical, National Insurance Commission (NAICOM); Leonard Akah, Head, Corporate Governance, Enforcement and Compliance, NAICOM; Ebelechukwu Nwachukwu, Managing Director/CEO, NSIA Insurance Ltd and Richard Borokini, Director General, Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria (CIIN), during the NAIPCO workshop on ‘end of year sector review/projection 2019: sip in perspective’ in Lagos on Friday.
BY NKECHI NAECHE—The National Insurance Commission ( NAICOM) on Friday said the industry’s gross claim figure for third quarter (Q3) 2018 rose to N143 billion when compared with N110 billion reported for the same period in 2017; indicating an increase of 30 percent.
The Commissioner for insurance Mohammed Kari who disclosed this during a workshop with insurance and pension journalists in Lagos, stated that they anticipate the final figures for 2018 to be significant.
The commissioner, represented by Deputy Commissioner Technical, Mr. Sunday Thomas, said gross premium as at the (Q3) third quarter was N315 billion, a 22 percent increase over the N258billion for 2017 in the same period.
Speaking further on the industry performance, he said: “The outlook may not be as rosy as we all would have liked but NAICOM sees the silver lining and is fully committed to making the most of it.
He said: “We have set for ourselves a clear, unambiguous task: to improve the aggregate numbers by enabling individual operators to optimally serve a much larger customer pool with a more varied basket of products. “The end game for us is to increase the insurance uptake ratio among the Nigeria populace.”
He listed financial Inclusion, micro insurance and expansion of Channels of distribution among others as a number of initiatives that have been put in place towards achieving set targets.
He added that financial inclusion is one of the tools the commission envisage to help improve market penetration.
The initiative he noted is premised on the fact that getting the mass of the financially excluded to embrace insurance in one form or another will have a positive impact.
“insurance companies are being encouraged to have a buyin into our microinsurance initiatives for the Nigerian market. The Takaful market is still grossly under accessed by the public, there is therefore theneed for aggressive promotion in aid of financial inclusion.
“In addition, efforts are being made to expand the distribution channels for insurance products because the traditional channels are becoming too restrictiveand suboptimal. Whereas Bancassurance has receivedthe most attention, there are other initiatives to reach out to the public.”
He assured that the achievements of the goal that they have set for themselves are predicated on the market’s ability to attract business and customers need to have confidence in operators.
To this end, he said the commission has championed an industry-wide rebranding project to burnish our reputation, but we cannot do it alone.
