Flood: Insurers urged to showcase need for insurance

Flood: Insurers urged to showcase need for insurance

Chuks Udo Okonta

Insurance operators have been urged to use the effect of the flood that has affected lives and economies of the public in many states to drum the need for insurance.

President Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria (CIIN) Dr. Wole Adetimehin, said this in a statement by the institute’s Director of Corporate Communications Joseph Obah.

Adetimehin, said insurance penetration in Nigeria is a concomitance of several factors ranging from the less than optimal level of public awareness to its degree of visibility in the average citizen’s scale of preference.

He said: “In many ways, Insurance remains an essential index for measurement of national development although lacking in its expected degree of presence in both individual and national consciousness, especially in developing countries like Nigeria.

“Recent flooding of parts of Nigeria and cases of related environmental hazards make Insurance the way to go for Nigerians. The insurance sub-sector must seize this as the needed opportunity to drive home its age-long message.”

On the 2012 Education Seminar of the institute, with the theme: Making Insurance Count, scheduled for November 7 to 9 in Port Harcourt the Rivers State Capital, he noted that the seminar will address the imperatives for improved service delivery and ensuring that the policy holder is protected at all times.

He said the seminar, brings into focus the imperatives for growing insurance bigger in public perception while examining the ways and means by which branch office operations could be strengthened to guarantee prompt resolution of customer related issues which have remained sore sports in the Industry’s profile.

Adetimehin said the resolution of all customer related issues should be a win-win situation with the customer and the service provider occupying positions of mutual respect, adding that the choice of the seminar theme is borne out of the compelling need to make insurance count for the policy holder through deliberate shifts in strategy and guaranteed improvement in service delivery which must ensure that the customer’s genuine interest is protected over and above business interest.

Speakers at the CIIN seminar include Wehinmi Jemide and Wale Onaolapo of WJLLP Consulting and Sovereign Trust Insurance plc, respectively