Insurance consumers demand better treatment

Soladoye

Chuks Udo Okonta

The Nigeria insurance industry - the operators the regulators and the shareholders should all be reminded of the fact that they are remunerated and compensated from our premium. We deserve better treatment for our patronage; those were the words of the National Technical Adviser (NTA) Insurance Consumers Association of Nigeria, Yemi Soladoye.

He made the call in a paper entitled: The Expectations of the Insurance Consumers in Nigeria – Today, Tomorrow, presented at the Business Journal insurance summit in Lagos.

He appealed to insurance practitioners not to be arrogant about this, stressing that the era of “and so what” or “you can go to hell” is over with the Nigerian Insurance Consumers.

He said: “The Nigeria insurance industry - the operators the regulators and the shareholders should all be reminded of the fact that they are remunerated and compensated from our premium. We deserve better treatment for our patronage.

“We hereby appeal to the Insurance Practitioners not to be arrogant about this. The era of “and so what” or “you can go to hell” is over with the Nigerian Insurance Consumers. This is why we first sought affiliations with the Consumer Protection Council of Nigeria before making our public outing.

“The Nigerian insurance consumers have been deprived, traumatized and treated with arrogance in the past 93 years to the extent that the Insurance Practitioners even set up some organs within their market associations for us to bring our complaints to them as the judge on matters where they are also the accused.”
Soladoye noted that consumers are ready to forgive the past, but cannot forget, stressing that if therefore Nigeria is the 6^th most populous country in the world,  but the insurance performance is number 60, if Nigeria is the 2^nd largest economy in Africa, but the insurance performance is number five, if there is no single insurance company in Nigeria that makes the list of the biggest 15 in Africa, if the Nigeria insurance industry does not become relevant in the financing of the national budgets or in the capital market response, the practitioners should not go too far for the answer – it is the result of the way they treat their customers.
“With an Insurance Industry that commands the trust, respect, and confidence of the Insurance Consumers, our governments will not to finance our roads, airports and other infrastructure through “Concessioning” as Insurance is usually a veritable source for generating funds for projects of national development.

“We the Insurance Consumers Association of Nigeria (INSCAN) are ready to support and collaborate with the Nigeria Insurance Industry in its strategic role of protecting, driving and leading the Nigerian economy as it is done in other parts of the world,” he added.