About 4.080m Nigerians have insurance

About 4.080m Nigerians have insurance Chuks Udo Okonta About 4,080,000 Nigerians of the nation’s 168,000,000 population have insurance policies the Director General Nigerian Insurers Association (NIA) Mr Sunday Thomas, has said. Thomas told Inspen that the insurance gap (number of uninsured people) stands at 94 per cent (163920000) meaning that only six per cent of the nation’s population have access to insurance. He expressed misgivings on Nigerians attitude to insurance, noting that even the educated are yet to appreciate the workings of insurance which is the best mechanism to mitigate risks. He noted that the industry market volume as at last year stand at N182billion, adding that it employed less than 10,000 employees. He noted that the industry hopes to achieve a premium volume of N6trillion and total market asset base of N16 trillion, generate employment of not less than 300,000 and increase penetration (Contribution to Gross Domestic Product)from 0.6 per cent to 15 per cent. Thomas said the industry will also achieve a density (Premium per Capital) of $ 256, reduce insurance Gap from 94 per cent to less than 30 per cent, attains full deployment of high level information technology and high level implementation of solvency. He noted that the industry presently occupies 60 position in the world insurance market and fourth in Africa, adding that operators are poised to turn thing around through availability and quality of relevant products, effective distribution system, deliberate program of human capital development, improvement in ethical standard, remarkable increase in quality of service delivery, awareness campaign and enhanced quality of regulatory policies. He said unethical issues have been a bane to the industry’s growth adding that the NIA has rose to the challenge through the initiation of market agreement. He noted that the market agreement was designed to make operator underwrite businesses in accordance to stipulated rules, adding that continuous efforts are made to ensure compliance. “The issue of market agreement is not just about rates, but about service delivery. People would have misconstrued market agreement to mean rates. They have actually taken market agreement to be synonymous with rates cutting. It is beyond that, a lot of things are meant to be achieved appropriate rating of risks in the insurance market. “I can say the market agreement is working. We have had interventions on issues that relates to the market agreement. We had understanding on the perception of our members, hence we had a retreat and the focus of the retreat essentially is to review the agreement and make it more workable. That is exactly what we have done. So far, members are respecting the agreement, we have not had serious complains as we had prior the retreat.” He said the NIA has spelt out measures of disciplining errant members, adding that has the constitutional power to expel members who portray the image of the association in bad light. “We have a disciplinary committee among members who discipline errant members. Some members have been suspended and on serious cases some members have been expelled. Ours is a voluntary association not set-up by government. If the way and manner a member conducts his affairs is not consistence with the belief of the association, the association has the right to excuse the fellow. If the association sees that what you are doing is not helping the interest of the association, they would ask you to move, which is part of the constitution of the association,” he added.