Ebere Nwoji
Against the backdrop of low penetration of insurance and minimal contribution of insurance sector to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Nigeria’s economy, Pinet Informatics, one of the first Internet Service Providers in Africa, said it is set to broker a strong partnership between information technology industry and insurance sector through an annual national insurance conference that will bring the two sectors closer to each other for the purpose of promoting E insurance in Nigeria.
Pinet informatics, is optimistic that if the Nigerian insurance sector is driven by ICT, operators will record huge success in their current effort to increase insurance penetration in Nigeria.
Pinet Informatics chief executive officer, Lanre Ajayi, announcing the proposed conference at a media briefing, said whereas banking industry has about 23 percent penetration and telecommunication sector 55 percent, it is disheartening to know that only 1.5million Nigerians are insured out of over 180 million population.
This represents less than one percent of the population.
He blamed low insurance penetration and poor patronage of the industry by Nigerians on poor selling approach by industry operators.
According to him, the gross premium income of the industry put between N300 billion and N400 billion is below profit margin of one bank in Nigeria, noting that operators keep on talking about implementation of compulsory insurance as a strategy to grow patronage instead of focusing on highlighting the insurance value proposition.
He said in organising the conference, Pinet Informatics, wants to use the opportunity to bring the insurance sector closer to ICT sector for the duo to brainstorm on how to use IT to take insurance value to Nigerians.
He said Pinet Informatics, has taken up the task of using IT to promote insurance value to Nigerians because it believes there is value in Insurance.
He said his organisation, has lined up a number of strategies to be used to achieve the task.
He said after applying the strategies, operators will in the next three years measure with smiles on their faces the improvement in their activities.
The Pinet Informatics boss, also said the theme of the conference scheduled for March 23rd,2017 at Sheraton Hotel , Lagos is “Driving Insurance Penetration through Information Communication Technology”.
According to him, eminent speakers have been selected from both insurance and It sectors to speak on the selected topics.
The conference is expected to bring together corporate organisations, ICT experts, insurance experts, academia, consumers of insurance products and regulators of both industries.
