Insurers battle to bridge skill gap

Insurers battle to bridge skill gap

How to bridge the gap between the number of people leaving insurance industry and those being employed has remained a herculean task for operators. The Director General Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria (CIIN) Mr ADEGBOYEGA ADEPEGBA, in this interview with CHUKS UDO OKONTA, speaks on efforts to attract young professionals to salvage the situation.

        

What is your assessment of the insurance industry?

My assessment is that there are still a lot more to be done by the industry itself, there are still a lot more to be done by the institute where I happen to be the Director General. I will say the Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria (CIIN), which is the body that has been given the statutory powers to train and retrain insurance professionals in Nigeria, is doing its best to ensure that those who will hold themselves high as professionals are well trained before they are certified. That is, for you to become an insurance professional, you must have gone through some prescribed examinations, which the institute conducts. And the examination is in three parts, we have the certificate, the diploma and advanced diploma stage. If any one hopes to hold himself high as a professional, he must go through these examinations. The institute provides different services to enable us prepare the students for examination. We also have a college that has been put in place to ensure that we train those who would take the examinations and those that will come in for refresher courses. The institute has also some examination programmes that it conducts on regular bases, some in annual bases and regular intervals. For example, the conferences, seminars, in house programmes and Mandatory Continuing Professional Development (MCPD) training programme. In all that I have said concerning the efforts of the institute, I think the insurance education in the country is not doing badly. I can say members of the industry are getting the best on training. We have also encouraged that education is not something you get from a particular source like the CIIN; we also encourage students and our members to develop and re-develop themselves. The MDCP programme for an example ensures that a student writes, carry out research, and attend programmes that can broaden his or her knowledge about the practice of insurance. I can say insurance is Nigeria is gathering momentum.

What are the challenges confronting the institute?

There are a lot of challenges; of course finance is the major issue, whether for the institute or the corporate bodies that would send their staff for programmes. Over the years, I want to suspect, that the budget for training has being falling, I do not have the figures, but I suspect, that there might be some scaling down of budget for training, this is a major challenge. This is because no matter how good and elaborate a training programme is, if we do not have more of our members attending there is a challenge. It is no longer fashionable for a practitioner to just have one certificate in the present dispensation.  Professions have intertwined that somebody must have a bit of what is obtainable in other professions. The knowledge that was impacted 10 years ago may not be sufficient to drive the business of today.  Therefore, there is the challenge for our people to change in learning new things and asking more questions. There is also the challenge on research, raising qualified people who can impact knowledge on young practitioners. Our professionals are very busy people, but the time has come for them to give back something to those that are coming up. The challenge we have here is that the professionals have their primary duties and must meet certain targets in their officers. We have been trying to encourage the professionals, but it has not been easy. We try to encourage people to have mentors and build relationships, but we still have some challenges. We hope that with the many good hands we have in the industry, which may not be getting younger, there is need for us to begin to ask them to impact on others.

How has the institute fared in encouraging intake of fresh hands to replace aging practitioners?

Most professionals have continued to age and we have continued to educate young people to take our examination to boost their performance. We have improved on our awareness drive and there are more people coming in to register for our examination, but there is still the need to fast track it. I believe we must be able to match the number of people coming in two times over and above those going out. That we have not been able to achieved. There is a danger if we have for an example 30 people retiring every year and we cannot find about 40 or 50 people replacing them by way of qualification. Exit can be as a result of death, retirement, loss of jobs and other factors, whereas, the only entrance into the profession is the CIIN which monitors those who come into the industry. When we did the last count, we observed that we have average of 60 people joining the profession every year. I do not want to go into the number of people that leave the industry for I do not have the figure, but we know that people are leaving due to age and other reasons. I believe there has been some improvement in the number of people coming in; for we are working seriously to get more people into the profession through National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) orientations campaigns, visit to tertiary institutions, Catch Them Young Programmes, our Operation 5000 Graduate Scheme and others.

What is the state of the insurance college?

The college of insurance and financial management is evolving; its blue print is ready. I do tell people that the college is not the building – the number of classes we have, but the blue print which we have been able to develop and where the blue print is taking us to is that within the next few months, we would be admitting students. Whether we admit them in the permanent site or somewhere else, would not be the most important thing now, but the important thing is that we have a blue print and we are bringing in people that would run the college. We would be bringing experts from the industry that would form the faculties of the college. Presently, the administration block of the college is completed, the restaurant is 90 per cent completed. We have seven chalets that have also been completed. With the completion of buildings we have in there, we can start. We have made tremendous progress on the college. We have completed the administrative block that houses the class rooms and can sit about 2000 students. We have admin offices for the college rector and other staff. We have a restaurant and seven chalets for people who may want to stay overnight. The next stage is for us to build the halls for presidents and that I think before the end of the year, we shall lay the foundation for that.

What is the required qualification for the college?

There are various levels of what we would be doing in the college. One of them is the school levers programme. That is those who have finished their Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (SSCE) and are trying to go into the university. We have discovered through research that Nigerian universities cannot admit 15 per cent of those who qualify to be given admission. We have seen a window of opportunities in the admission gap. If somebody cannot go into the university directly instead of writing the examination year-in-year-out, the individual can start a programme we designed for school leavers. With five credits including English and Mathematics, an individual can enroll for the programme that will run for nine months and obtain a certificate that would cover the first stage of the professional exam of the institute. Once that is done, the student would start with exemptions of six subjects. We are starting the college with the school leavers’ programme. We still have refresher programme that allows people have lectures before the main examination. The programme is designed to help prepare our students for the institutes’ exam. We also have refresher programmes for middle level managers.  

What is the state of insurance curriculum in secondary schools?

We are working on the development of curriculum for the teaching of insurance in Senior Secondary (SS) Class one to three. The other stage is providing books for them, for they cannot use the books we have now, there must be a tailor made sets of books for those students. It is until we are able to achieve success in these areas that we can begin to interact with principals. We also have to work with the school even now, but most of the works are been done by professionals, who would liaise with education experts to develop text books and curriculums. Our school levers programme is designed for people would have not had basic knowledge of insurance that have been out of school for more than five years. From these classes of people, we hope to get crop of people who would do our professional exams. We are also making efforts to ensure that students have adequate knowledge of insurance so that they can help take the message of insurance back to their homes.

What is the institute doing about the writing of the books for the secondary schools?

We have a pool of authors who would be writing the books. We need people who have flare for writing and hope to work with educationists who would review the books. We are going to tie the writing of the books to things like payment and our MCPD. Those who do a paper or books for the institute would be given MCPD credit points that would enable them advance their carrier prospect.

What is your plan for the future?

First and foremost, I believe the future belongs to God. As a manager, I think the future starts from today. Along this line, we have been able to put in place certain things in the secretariat that would ensure that the organisation would continue. There is succession plan and there is adequate plan for emergence. We have laid the plan to sustain any development either now or in the future. As the chief executive who has had the privilege of heading the institute for close to 10 years, I believe that no leader is successful unless he has a successor. I have already groomed somebody who can take over when it is time for me to go. I also have my personal plans which I hope to make public at the right time.

What are your achievements so far?

The achievements are not really a solo effort, but through a team work. In the almost 10 years, we have been able to move the organisation forward. We have been able to move from rudimentary stage to where it is today. We have been able to use the law to make a statement about the institute. We have been able to make members believe more on our operations. We have been able to benchmark with other institutes, we have been able to promote the business of insurance, and we have enhanced protection of the industry. We have also worked on our staff and introduced changes in our curriculum. We introduced the chief executive exchange programme, the fitness work, better interaction with the industry, cordial relationship with the regulator, have our secretariat, the college of insurance and other feats.

As non professional how have you been able to cope with the administration of the institute?

While I would not unduly justify that a non professional can run this place, I want to say that what is required to run this place successfully is a good knowledge of management. Other things required to run the institute are, deep managerial skill, ability to wed people together, ability to win the support of the industry, ability to meet the needs of members, cutting down ones excesses. The work here is like that of a judge. In the years I have been here, I have lost many friends and cut down many because if one is running an institution like ours, he must be above certain boards.