NAICOM Partners NIRSAL on Index-based Agric Insurance

Ndubuisi Francis and Udora Orizu in Abuja
The National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) in collaboration with Nigeria Incentive based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) has championed an inclusive agric insurance scheme, which will enable farmers have good access to insurance coverage.

Speaking at a workshop on index insurance, product design, evaluation and risk transfer process in Abuja, the Commissioner for Insurance, Alhaji Mohammed Kari noted that index insurance is a new concept to Nigeria, hence the need for capacity-building to enhance progress in the drive to achieve efficiency and effectiveness in index-based agric insurance in the country.

Kari said: “Our drive in this regard is tending with the ongoing effort of this present administration to diversify the economy and create opportunities to promote agricultural business and youth empowerment and index based agric insurance is one program that is in support of this policy of the government. “For us at the National Insurance Commission, we desire to create penetration and market growth; we have embraced index- based agric insurance as a strategic initiative for insurance penetration as well as contribution to the development of agriculture,” he said

According to him, in the last one year, NAICOM has played active role in promoting access to agricultural finance, adding that there was the need to request for further support from its partners especially in the areas of facilitation of comprehensive feasibility study on pilot bases.

Others, he listed, are technical assistance on the provision of historical weather index data, and technical capacity building to regulatory persons who should be learned in product design, risk modeling, capital management, design of regulatory and supervisory framework, development of frameworks and guidelines for index-based insurance regulation and supervision of operations, training and educational programmes for key agricultural staff.

Kari expressed his delight that the collaboration between NIACOM, Africa Re, International Finance Corporation (IFC) has already achieved product approval for five insurance companies who are participating in the pilot scheme.

In his remarks, the Managing Director of NIRSAL Aliyu Abdulhameed stated that the target of NIRSAL over the next few years is to work towards reaching about 3.8 million individual primary producers comprising farmers with innovative insurance products.
According to him, index space insurance is a new and innovative development that speaks to the current multiplicity of problems that
farmers face.

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