BY NKECHI NAECHE-ESEZOBOR—Nigerian underwriting firms are gearing up to retain major domestic risks and halt capital flight as the capital restructuring window nears its climax.
Veritas Kapital Assurance Plc has announced that it has already fulfilled its regulatory compliance ahead of the upcoming statutory deposit deadlines.
Speaking on the sidelines of the recently concluded African Insurance Organisations (AIO) conference in Cairo, Egypt, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Veritas Kapital Assurance Plc, Dr. Adaobi Nwakuche, confirmed that the firm proactively met its statutory deposit obligations with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) well ahead of the May 30 timeline.
“Veritas has already done that, I mean, a long while ago,” Dr. Nwakuche stated. “We’re working towards it, and by July 31, Veritas is one of the companies that will be counted.”
The ongoing recapitalization exercise in Nigeria’s insurance sector is designed to structurally reset the industry by expanding balance sheet liquidity. According to industry leaders, a highly capitalized insurance sector is the only structural antidote to the persistent “flight of capital”—a trend where large-scale local risks, particularly in specialized fields like oil and gas, aviation, and major infrastructure, are routinely ceded to foreign international mega-insurers due to low local capacity.
The real essence of this recapitalization is to be able to equip more insurance companies in terms of liquidity,” Nwakuche explained. “If you have solid insurance companies that are liquid and able to take on bigger risk… we’re going to save more capital here instead of the flight of capital, particularly on special risks. We’re going to have to retain more in the local industry instead of having to cede them out.”
By trapping these premium volumes within the domestic financial ecosystem, the local underwriting industry expects to materially boost its aggregate contribution to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
