REPORTING INSURANCE FOR MARKET DEVELOPMENT BY KELVIN EGERUE BUSINESS EDITOR CHAMPION NEWSPAPER AT A SEMINAR FOR INSURANCE JOURNALISTS IN IJEBU-ODE OGUN STATE

REPORTING INSURANCE FOR MARKET DEVELOPMENT BY KELVIN EGERUE BUSINESS EDITOR CHAMPION NEWSPAPER AT A SEMINAR FOR INSURANCE JOURNALISTS IN IJEBU-ODE OGUN STATE

 

“WE MAY NOT HAVE GOTTEN TO WHERE WE

 WANT TO BE BUT WE ARE CERTAINLY NOT

WHERE WE USED TO BE”

 

INTRODUCTION

Insurance reporting for market development. A simple assignment you must say. It literarily means that the typical insurance correspondent has to report or narrate what has happened in order to ensure the development of the insurance market. If nothing happens, the correspondent has no obligations as he has nothing to report and thus will not impact on the development of the market.

But when one realizes the fact that the development of the insurance sector depends on the growth of the larger economy which, in turn, thrives in a stable socio-economic environment, it presupposes that the insurance reporter has much more to do than waiting for an event or action to take place for him to merely report the incident.

But Mr Bakary Kamara, the former Managing Director of African Reinsurance Corporation had reminded insurance practitioners way back in 1997 that “We must be alive to our responsibilities and should support all efforts, both within and outside the industry, that are aimed at pushing up the market to its deserved status in the African insurance industry. The market should be able to support itself in terms of technical skills, expertise and experience”.

Chairman of the Nigerian Insurers Association on whose instance  we are here today, the Director General and staff of the NIA, distinguished guests, my dear colleagues in the business of insurance reporting, ladies and gentlemen, it is a thing of joy to lead the discussion as we make honest inquiry into finding ways of improving  what we have accepted to do: To help the insurance industry become stronger and financially more rewarding. I will resist mentioning our own selfish interest in all these which is our desire to get better and richer in commensurate terms to the growing fortunes of the insurance industry.

Without sounding immodest, and I stand to be corrected when I remarked that the better way to measure the growth of the nation’s economy is perhaps to conduct an inquiry into the activities and performances of the Nigerian insurance industry in the last two decades

Although insurance prides itself as one of the oldest professions in Nigeria, it has taken the last two decades for it to be properly positioned, its roles and impacts made more manifest and thereby positioning its practitioners to stand up to be counted as catalysts of growth and economic development and social engineering. The last two decades in reference represent the period when journalists and journalism in Nigeria made commitment to the industry;  a commitment to partner with the market, to serve as a mirror and not an instrument of propaganda, a gauge and not a platform for self-aggrandizement.

The case of the insurance business in Nigeria prior to its new found romance with the media was that of not being able to say “Here I am”, hence given the larger community the cynical advantage of not saying, “There they are”.

I recall with nostalgia when in 1992 the then Editor of Champion Newspapers Mr. Emma Agu developed the brain wave of creating a column for insurance stories and one of the line managers rose in anger to challenge  him on why any person in his right senses  would want to waste four pages of the newspaper reporting an industry that, according to him does not exist.

“What do they even do? Who knows insurance people? Do they even advertise?;  the protesting manager queried. Those posers that he raised provided the resolve to embark on a venture, an adventure which resulted in the unleashing of no fewer than 45 army of journalists on the insurance industry, a market which now desires to mobilize well over N1 trillion annual  income for the nation in comparison to the N364 million premium income in 1984.

There is no gain saying that the fortunes of the insurance industry and its practitioners have changed for good no thanks to the resolve to engage its various publics using the handle provided by both the print and electronic media

How many of today’s insurance practitioners and financial journalists will remember that the today’s National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) used to squat at the third floor of the Federal Secretariat, Ikoyi, Lagos and as a division of the Ministry of Trade to emerge as a commission in search of autonomy.

The fact that Chief Eugene Okwor served as insurance supervisor for unimaginably long years under different titles and portfolios was not due, mainly, to his ingenuity as an insurance administrator but because the office of insurance supervisor was not in the least attractive then. So was the insurance profession. Compare this with what it takes to be so appointed as commissioner for insurance in this era. This has to do with the high level exposure and reportage of the insurance industry which culminated in insurance shading the toga of being the poorer cousin of the banking sector.

It is a statement of fact that the today’s Nigerian insurance industry is no longer suffering from image problem not with the billions of naira paid annually in claims. The uploading of the stories and photographs of insurance companies rolling out drums to celebrate the presentation of their claim cheques to their clients have seen many of the uninsured queuing up to sign new policies.

I have chosen to go this far in drawing attention to what and how the reportage of insurance business has impacted positively  on the fortunes of the industry so as to align our minds to the major assignment of this paper which is the deployment of media in propagating and ensuring the growth of the industry in particular and the development of the nation’s economy in general.

Simply put, our major concern in this session is to basically x-ray insurance reporting in the larger context of developmental journalism. How can today’s journalist partner the insurance practitioners in ensuring growth in the insurance subsector?

The term “development journalism” is used to refer to two different types of journalism. The first is a new school of journalism that began to appear in the 1960s. The idea behind it is similar to investigative reporting, but it focuses on conditions in developing nations and ways to improve them. The other type of development journalism involves heavy influence from the government of the nation or industry involved. While this sort can be a powerful tool for local education and empowerment, it can also be a means of suppressing information and restricting journalists.

The first type of development journalism attempts to document the conditions within a country (or industry) so that the larger world can understand them. Journalists are encouraged to travel to remote areas, interact with the citizens of the country, and report back. It also looks at proposed government projects to improve conditions in the country, and analyze whether or not they will be effective. Ultimately, the journalist may come up with proposed solutions and actions in the piece, suggesting ways in which they might be implemented. Often, this form of journalism encourages a cooperative effort between citizens of the nation and the outside world.

 

The second type can walk a thin line. On the one hand, government (or industry) participation in mass media can help get important information spread throughout the nation. Governments can help to educate their citizens and enlist cooperation on major development projects. A government can also use the idea of “development” to restrict freedom of information or speech for journalists, however. Journalists are told not to report on certain issues because it will impact negatively on the “development” of the nation in question, and therefore citizens are not actually being given access to the whole picture.

 

As a tool for social justice, development journalism can be very valuable. By speaking for those who cannot, a journalist can inform the rest of the world about important issues within developing nations. Looking at the strengths and weaknesses of a country may also help identify ways in which the nation can be helped. This style of journalism is a tool for empowerment and social engineering.

 

When journalism is used as a propaganda tool, however, it can become very dangerous. Many citizens (customers) are taught that the news is a reliable and useful source of information. For example, within a developing nation (in this case, insurance industry) which has a corrupt government (practitioners), journalistic expose of the government (insurance practitioners) is extremely important for reform. If journalists are not allowed to write about what is actually going on, the citizens are not well served. Several international press organizations release reviews every year which look at the freedom of mass media in individual nations in an attempt to bring freedom of the information to all countries for this very reason.

 

INSURANCE, REPORTING AND MARKET DEVELOPMENT

Gentlemen of the press, at no time will you be able to appreciate better the interventional tendencies of the media in nation building than now as I urge you to spend a few seconds in doing a quick reflection on the topic of our discussion.. : Insurance Reporting for market Development

Have it ever occurred to you that those reports, analyses, interviews, features and investigations that you conduct on insurance and insurance practitioners go beyond justifying your salaries in the office to include a gradual but steady build –up to either fostering the growth of a critical segment of the nation’s economy or destroying it?

It will interest you to note that of all the major stakeholders in the business of insurance, the media were the first to emerge on the scene after the insurance practitioners themselves and not even the insured or the subject of insurance itself. Curious isn’t it?

In the late 17th century, seafarers flocked the Edward Lloyd’s coffeehouse in Town Street, near the Thames water front in London to gossip, play and conduct business and Edward Lloyd serviced their needs. It was noted then that coffee, valued for its therapeutic powers was a penny for a cup. But then, pens, ink and paper were provided for the seafarers free  as was NEWS by Lloyd’s servants who shuttle back and forth between the coffeehouse and the docks, gathering the latest information on the comings and goings of the ships and their cargoes. The Lloyd’s servants were reporting, they were reporters.

It was said that in those days of rudimentary navigation, news about ship movements were often bad as ships were often wrecked and merchants ruined. It was at the Lloyd’s coffeehouse that modern marine insurance was born with rates, premiums and computations of claims considered on the basis of the information provided by Lloyd’s servants (newsmen).

Today, most if not all of the major stakeholders who were part of the evolution of insurance appear to have raised their games in terms of their contributions to the development of the insurance market. Can the media stand up to be counted? Can we truly say that we have contributed to the development of the market beyond the desemination of news? Can we go beyond the application of the Rotary Club’s golden 4-Way test? The answer is capital YES.

I employ you to take particular notice of the choice of the word “development” as opposed to “growth” as a controlling variable in this exercise.

It took Professor Akpan Ekpo who is the Director General of West African  Institute for Financial and Economic Management (WAIFEM), an economist and former director of the CBN for me to come to terms with the words-- growth and development as applied by economists. Growth applies to the quantum leap in economic indices while economists consider development as the actual translation and reflection of growth to the well being of the citizenry, institutions and infrastructure. Simply put, a nation can be witnessing growth without development.

The big question confronting all of us today is no longer the issue of the creation of awareness for the insurance industry or standing in defense of a perceived but erroneous poor image problem. We have gone beyond that. If we all realize the fact that the insurance industry plays a vital role as a major vehicle for mobilizing funds for capital investments both as facilitators  and institutional investors, then we would agree with me that we have greater responsibility in creating and sustaining a balance. Savings are transferred into investments through the insurance companies. The vast amount of premiums collected by these companies form part of the insurance funds invested in different sectors of the national economy such as housing development, building of factories, industries and other economic ventures. Modern economies rely to a very large extent upon the existence of efficient and reliable credit systems and insurance plays a major role in facilitating the efficient operation of the credit system.

It is against this backdrop that I insist that today’s insurance journalist  should begin to see himself  or herself as a specialist capable of not limiting himself to proffering solutions to problems and hardly  erecting the needed blocks and pegs to building a stronger insurance institution.

There were some rudimentary things and pegs that I erected years back which I think could be re-enforced considering that they worked for Champion Newspapers  as an institution which desired to  synergize  with the insurance industry. No doubt, they helped to deepen the frontiers of insurance business as we see it today.

Go beyond the ordinary.

Because you are reporting an industry which has been largely misunderstood, you are expected not to adopt the conventional reportage. Because you run a column, your editors are likely to understand why you must not stop at the conventional news of who said what. Draw out an outline, a template if you like. I did. I created such columns as:

COMPANY PERFORMANCE where I go beyond the reporting of company’s annual general meetings to analyzing the financial report. Can a company which incurred an operational cost of say N2.5 billion generating a premium of N10 billion culminating in a net profit of N1.5 billion be said to have done well when placed side-by-side with a company which had a net profit of N980 million from a gross income of N1.5 billion? It will take your analysis for other stakeholders mostly the shareholders to come to terms whether or not the N10 billion firm is actually growing or not.

 I also had WHO IS WHERE which enabled me to keep track of movement and career growth part of practitioners and I must confess that it attracted more than expected followership. 

I had PRODUCT CYCLE which allowed me the latitude of doing an expose on any insurance product of choice. I had a problem with the advert department though but the editorial leadership prevailed since management accepted the fact that no contribution would be considered too much in helping to develop the insurance market in Nigeria. There was the PERSONALITY, FEED BACK, CIIN Forum and HELP DESK.

Just recently during our management visit to one of the leading insurance companies in Nigeria, the GMD/CEO made the confession to Champion Newspapers management: That his company in its quest to do things differently  and to grow decided to study CNL’s Tuesday Insurance pull-out for a period of three years. This was to have a handle on the problems associated with the business and to point the way forward. After the three year-year study, according to this GMD who has been in the business of insurance for over three decades, the consultant who headed the study group came up with 35 products which have all been approved by NAICOM and would soon be launched into the market. This is how positive media engagement can go in the insurance sector.

The point that I am trying to make here is that we must accept the fact that we have an obligation of making conscious efforts at helping to deepen the insurance market in Nigeria.

The concept and structure of insurance operation present it as an elitist product. No wonder it has been said severally that insurance thrives best in a buoyant economy where the population has stronger purchasing power. This by implication means that a greater percentage of Nigerians will for a long time to come, remain outsiders in the fold of insurance and the protection which it provides. Yet, the poorer rural communities who lack the economic power to replace or restore their positions when they suffer any loss unlike the top government functionaries are the same people who care less about the potency of insurance as a veritable risk management mechanism. Here, we owe it as a duty; a responsibility by, going down  to link those who need insurance to the insurance products which they need.

We now have Small and Medium scale Enterprises (SMEs) which used to be the one-man business kind of a thing before now. But because there was a conscious effort at a time to grow and encourage entrepreneurship, the issue of SMEs was brought to the front burner. The effect is that we have succeeded in encouraging more people into doing what they were hitherto capable of doing but which they never had the confidence to embark upon.

Linking this to insurance, it presupposes that if I and my colleagues decide to devote more air time and space to discussing the insurance components of the activities of the SMEs such as agricultural insurance, we could succeed in entrenching  such a culture as is obtainable in India where penny insurance has culminated into a large pool of funds from where every citizen draws from.

J.K. Randle who is a friend of the insurance industry had in a paper he presented in 2001 in Abuja remarked that insurance is not all about property. It is all about lives. Reporting for the development of the insurance market with particular emphasis on the Nigerian market would mean reporting to develop the Nigerian citizens. This, I think is a greater responsibility. It is an honour which only very few people would have. You have that privilege, apply it well.

What to be done? Can we not cajole the insurance industry to get more involved in the trading and politics of the stock market? For how long will the insurance companies be the ones to be forced in submitting their accounts to the stock market?. What happens to the routine issues like facts behind the figures which other players in the capital market fall on top of each other to be part of? Can we as media practitioners deploy our skills   towards ensuring improvement in this area knowing that it could aid the development of the business of insurance? 

Is it still beneficial to the insurance sector that its operators have remained egocentric? Most of you will recall the impact of Hon Laoshe when he participated in the activities of the national assembly as a member of the House of Representatives. Getting more if not regular representation of insurance professionals at such high political offices including that of the governor of a state will see the industry getting better in terms of policies and dispositions to insurance matters. You remember that there was a president of The Gambia who is an insurance professional? Even the Nigerian insurance market felt the positive impact of his regime in far away The Gambia. Now, begin to imagine how it would look like for us to have one Chief Eugene Okwor, ‘Dipo Baily, Alhaji Mohammed Koguna or Ms Prisca Soares as president of Nigeria, Minister of Finance or Senate President. Would we still be talking of enforcement of compulsory insurance, budgeting for insurance premium on the part of both the federal and state governments and the insurances of government properties and related insurable interests? Let us talk more in this direction. Let us begin to report the insurance industry from outside its prisms.

However, where there is a right, there is also some responsibilities.

When the organizers of this workshop conceived the idea of conducting an inquiry into the possibility of journalism and journalists as represented by insurance reporters playing a frontal  role in the development of the market, little did the consider the fact that the media men would require some basic equipment for them to function optimally.

Top on the list of the equipment to be needed is knowledge; the knowledge of the sector and people that they would be reporting and relating with.

Until recently, the insurance industry has looked the other way when it comes to the issue of training and educating media practitioners.

This ought not to be so. The industry had for a long time remained self centered; not wanting to train its personnel nor those that seek to relate with it. No wonder then that the banking sector dominated the financial landscape as if no other subsector mattered.

The Central Bank of Nigeria has had a 20-year unbroken record of annual training programme for financial journalists. The Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) has been on the block for over 10 years so are Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Debt Management Office (DMO). Banks like GTB have annual training programme which sees the bank ferrying correspondents to Ghana and the Gambia.

How much can be said of the insurance industry when it comes to indoctrinating and empowering some of its critical stakeholders the media inclusive? Better late than never you would say.

The CIIN has started an annual training session for the media, the NIA just keyed into the project. Association of pension fund operators took a position just last month.

The much that one can recommend at this stage is for the sustenance of this new thinking which is that it will take the education of the educationist for the education sector to be better positioned to educate the nation’s population.

I have not done anything beyond preparing the ground for a robust discussion with my colleagues on how best to partner the insurance industry in the sector’s desire to aid the development of the larger economy.

All that it will require is hard work, a strong belief in our capabilities and abilities to help turn around the fortunes of the industry in a manner characteristic of true and dedicated professionals that we are.