The Director-General, Nigeria Insurers Association (NIA), Mr Sunday Thomas, on Friday urged insurers to develop “positive perception insurance policies” to drive insurance penetration in the country.
The NIA DG made the remark in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos, against the backdrop of skepticism of many Nigerians to policies.
He said such policies, which could also be referred to as People Perception Policies (PPP), should be fashioned in a manner that would be attractive and difficult to reject.
Thomas said insurance firms needed to go beyond designing services and products to suit only the corporate world.
He listed some policies that could be developed as single ladies insurance, single men insurance and lost income insurance
For example, he said,“Women tend to want to get divorce; moreover, life is so unpredictable; this will help to compensate for the inevitable financial consequences that accompany challenges from such directions.’’
Thomas said that the insurance industry’s N16 trillion total asset base target for Year 2020 was realisable if the industry’s potentials were well harnessed.
“ Such target mandates industry stakeholders to harness all potentials that were hitherto lying fallow; there are still many risks that lack insurance for mitigation.
“Insurance practitioners have not been able to flood the market with enough risk covers and this is a major reason researchers described Nigerian insurance sector as grossly untapped,’’ he said.
Thomas said that less than one per cent of Nigerian housewives had insurance cover, even though the industry had been in existence for close a century.
He also emphasised the need for industry operators to shun the current trend of unhealthy competition among themselves.
“This unhealthy competition has seen many of the underwriters charging premium rate that is as low as one percent while others charge at 0.85 per cent rate instead of the standard rate.
“This is not good for our industry,” he said.
Thomas said if the target of N16 trillion total asset base target for Year 2020 is realised, the employment in the industry would move from 10,000 to generating not less than 300,000 employment opportunities per annum.
“It would also increase the contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from the current inconsequential 0.3 per cent to 15 per cent” he said.