Ebere Nwoji, ThisDay
The National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) said the new roadmap for transformation of the insurance industry which it created recently will witness the release of new guideline that will restructure insurance industry distribution channels.
The commission said the reason for this is to ensure effective distribution of insurance products to Nigerians.
The Director Inspectorate division of NAICOM Mr. Barineka Thompson who disclosed this while delivering a paper titled "Road map for transforming the Insurance sector in Nigeria " at a recent seminar organised for insurance correspondents in Benin, Edo State, said the guideline which will be released before the end of February will divide the industry's distribution channels into two major agencies.
According to him, these are brokers which will be divided into three specific classes to stand as individual brokers for the states, universal brokers for businesses nationwide and partnership brokers for ban assurance.
According to him, insurance agents will be divided into individual agents,corporate agents and insurance company agents which are insurance companies' marketers.
Also micro insurance agents, web aggregation and referral ban assurance will be created.
Mr Barineka said this has become necessary because Nigeria with huge population of over 170 million is currently under served with insurance products due to the use of conventional insurance brokers and insurance agents alone.
He said these two distribution channels cannot serve the market effectively in the face of the new roadmap .
Distribution channel was one of the limitations pointed out by NAICOM and GIZ research agency from Germany on why Nigerians don't buy insurance.
NAICOM in the research discovered that why it was hitherto assumed that Nigerians don't buy insurance due to poverty level, unawareness and ignorance were scored higher among the factors that contributed to non patronage of the industry by the people.
According to the research findings, many Nigerians do not know, understand and are not aware of how insurance works and what they stand to benefit from it.
As a result, they remained indifferent to insurance.
The situation was so because according to industry observers insurance firms and their distribution channels have been concentrating their marketing activities on major cities and towns where there are government and corporate businesses, leaving the grassroots dwellers who are retail buyers in total blackout on knowledge of insurance.
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