Stories by Ebere Nworji
As banks become more willing to give out credits to their customers, the insurance sector has more dominant roles to play the credit system, especially in the area of facilitating credit disbursement to the people by banks.
This view was expressed by the Managing Director, NSIA Insurance, Mrs Ebelechukwu Nwachukwu.
She stated this during a media briefing in Lagos, to announce the take-off of a radio awareness campaign tagged ‘NO WORRIES’ embarked on by the company.
Nwachukwu, who noted that the financial inclusion strategy of government would witness a lot of partnership between banks and insurance firms, said: “In the financial inclusion drive, there is going to be a lot of partnership with the bank because they too want to cover their risk.
“But we have to take businesses in line with the regulator’s guidelines, we have to make sure that what we do are what we are regulated to do. So, we have to engage NAICOM on guidelines around bank assurance so we will do as much as the regulator has regulated us to do,” she stated.
According to her, the insurance sector in Nigeria has underperformed over the years. But she expressed optimism that operators would now explore numerous opportunities available to the sector.
Speaking on NSIA Insurance efforts at deepening insurance, Nwachukwu, noted that in the western world where insurance penetration is very high, credit is also available. But, she pointed out that over there, no one could access credit without insurance.
“For us at NSIA we will definitely be working very hard to increase our penetration ratio. I think the opportunities are enormous for the industry,” she added.
She said NSIA, has secured the regulator’s approval to offer micro insurance services, as part of its retail strategy.
“We just set up our retail center but haven’t launched it yet, we are building a great company. Our objective as management is to make sure we build a business that will be sustainable and the one that will outlive every one of us. The founders of initial ADIC and now NSIA are old men, but the business is still here for us to work,” she added.
On the company’s awareness campaign, she said NSIA Insurance has gone live with the, “No Worries,” awareness campaign on major radio stations across the country.
According to her, the campaign commenced off Monday, October 21, 2019 across radio stations with the specified time for airing, running from
“We are putting ourselves out there to remind our customers of our commitment to serving them well. We bear in mind their needs and provide tailor-made solutions to suit them.
“We are known as the true face of Insurance because we understand and respond to all aspects of the insurance business”, she said.
She also said the NSIA Insurance recently announced the successful completion of its 2019 ISO Surveillance Audit by the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), after it was awarded the ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management System Certification in May 2018.
