Great Nigeria Insurance Tasks Nigerians on Insurance Culture

Ebere Nwoji

Great Nigeria Insurance Plc has urged Nigerians to adopt insurance culture in their day to day activities.

The insurance firm’s advice is coming on the heels of incessant cases of road accidents across the country; collapsed buildings, especially those under construction; fire outrage and other unforeseen happenings which have destroyed properties worth millions of Naira.

The Chief Technical Officer of the company, Mr. Folusho Alliyu stated this during a press briefing in Lagos .
According to Alliyu, this is the time Nigerians need to consciously be educated on the benefits derivable from insurance contract.

He said there are various insurance products that have been designed to protect lives and properties, noting that the most essential thing is for the insuring public to willingly open their minds in accepting the fact that insurance is a very important aspect of their lives.

“Nigerians have waited too long in recognising and accepting the reality that without insurance, one is like building a house without a foundation, which in no distance time, could crash.

“And when that happens, you will have to start from the scratch again with even more funds than you initially expended”, he explained.

According to him, insurance gives 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, he mentored.

Also, the DGM/ Head of Marketing and Business Development of the underwriting firm, Mr. Toyin Alonge attributed the low patronage of insurance in the country to the fact that Nigerians lack the basic insurance knowledge to fully appreciate the benefits inherent in it.

According to him, “there’s a willing suspension of acquiring basic knowledge about insurance products and how it works by majority of Nigerians which must be dispelled.’’
He said experience has shown that an individual who took one insurance policy or the other in the past but with ugly experience along the line was largely due to the inability to read through insurance policy document ,Adding that 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.

On her part, the Managing Director/CEO,of the company, Mrs. Cecilia O. Osipitan noted that low awareness remains one of the major reasons why a very large percentage of the Nigerian population is not insuring as they ought to considering the population and the level of commercial activities in the country.

She also emphasised the need to positively influence the perception of the insuring public to engender greater patronage of the sector, pointing out that wrong perception of the industry by many Nigerians is adversely affecting the performance of the industry.

She charged the industry operators to do more on sensitisation of the masses to ensure better patronage.

According Osipitan, as part of its sensitisation effort, Great Nigeria Insurance Plc recently launched a live radio program titled “GNIONGO” to extensively discuss the import of insurance with the different products and services available under the stable of the company.

GNIONGO is a weekly radio program which is aired live on Fridays between 12:15 pm and 12:30 pm on Traffic Radio 96.1FM with a call-in segment where listeners can call to ask questions and seek clarifications.

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