Nigerians have been urged to see insurance as a way of life. Managing Director, Great Nigeria Insurance Plc, Managing Director Mrs. Cecilia O. Osipitan gave the advice in Lagos.
Speaking with reporters in Lagos, she said the low insurance awareness in the country remains one of the major reasons a large percentage of the public are not insuring.
Mrs Osipitan urged Nigerians to educate themselves on the benefits of an insurance policy.
She said various insurance products had been designed to protect lives and properties, adding that the cases of road accidents, buildings collapse, and fire outbreaks across the country, where properties worth millions of naira have been destroyed, made insurance policy imperative.
She stressed that the most essential thing is for the public to know that insurance is beneficial to them.
She said: “Nigerians have waited too long in recognising and accepting the reality that without insurance, it is like one building a house without a foundation and in no time, it could come crashing; and when that happens, you will have to start from the scratch again with more funds than you initially expended.
“Insurance gives you the promise of a safe and comfortable future. The earlier we disabuse our minds of the old notion that insurance does not work, the better it will be for all of us.”
The company’s Chief Technical Officer Folusho Alliyu expressed displeasure with the low patronage of insurance.
According to him, Nigerians do not have enough awareness to appreciate the benefits of insurance.
“Experience has shown that an individual who took out one policy or the other in the past but with awry experience along the line was largely due to the inability of perusing their insurance contract or policy as the case may be. Such an individual is capable of giving wrong information or misrepresentation of ideas to would-be customers out there who would have taken one policy or the other, he said.
Alliyu stressed the need to influence the public, saying it is key to getting more patronage.
He also stressed that practitioners should ensure that the public was sensitised to embrace insurance as an integral part of their lives, adding: ‘’We all are confronted with different kinds of risk as we go about our daily businesses.’’