Law Union, other insurers drive for market expansion
Released on 28 May 2009
LAW Union & Rock Insurance Plc is working with 13 other insurers to deepen the Nigerian insurance market. The 14 insurance firms have launched a collective industry campaign to educate the public on the benefits of buying insurance. The campaign will in particular focus on the benefits derivable from investment in insurance products and services, and on how to access them.
The insurers collaborating in the industry campaign are ADIC Insurance, AIICO Insurance Plc, Consolidated Hallmark Plc, Cornerstone Insurance Plc, Custodian & Allied Insurance Plc, Guaranty Trust Assurance, International Energy Insurance Plc and Linkage Assurance Plc. Others are Leadway Assurance Plc, Standard Alliance Insurance Plc, Sovereign Trust Insurance Plc, Unity Kapital Insurance and Zenith Assurance Limited.
The perception campaign was initiated to grow the insurance industry by addressing various misconceptions and erroneous beliefs about the insurance business and its practitioners in Nigeria. Over the years the perception question has kept the industry down and prevented it from rising to its full potential, acknowledged by all to be immense. Nigeria is said to be a country with one of the lowest levels of insurance penetration in the world. Research has shown that just about one million Nigerians have any form of insurance polices, excluding the Nigerian Health Insurance Scheme.
Mr. Olumide Falohun, managing director and chief executive of Law Union, said the perception management campaign by the group of 14 insurance companies is meant to reposition insurance as an industry that must be embraced in every society as a major force for good and critical factor in economic development. Falohun said the collaborating insurers decided to work together to help increase insurance share of the Nigerian market by adopting the concerted approach.
Mr. Wole Oshin, chairman of Nigerian Insurance Association of Nigeria (NIA), explained that in spite of the huge growth potential for the Nigerian insurance market, the industry remains one of the most poorly developed, characterized by low penetration and poor level of awareness for insurance. At the 2008 National Insurance Conference in Abuja, the Minister of State for Finance, Mr. Remi Babalola, criticised the insurance sector for contributing less than one per cent to the nation's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The minister had blamed the industry for low service standard and inefficiency, and said that insurance has a strategic role to play in developing the economy.
Individual players in the collective like Law Union expect that when insurance is better perceived in the marketplace the benefit of enhanced patronage will be shared by all. Law Union has also partnered other operators in the First Energy Insurance Consortium, an industry pool for oil & gas insurance with a treaty capacity to underwrite risks of up to $1 billion.
