86 million Nigerians have no insurance cover –CIIN

About 86.6 million Nigerians have no form of insurance cover, the Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria has said.

The President, CIIN, Mr. Bola Temowo, said this was the outcome of a recent research.

He spoke at the institute’s annual seminar in Benin, Edo State, according to a statement obtained on Friday.

“Available records indicate that 86.6 million Nigerians have no form of insurance, while 1.3 million adults, representing 1.5 per cent of the entire Nigerian adult population, maintain some category of formal insurance cover,” he said.

He, however, envisaged that the current record of Nigeria’s insuring population would receive a boost and improve the industry’s profile in global ranking.

According to him, the Federal Government also envisions a fast growing insurance industry that will contribute substantially to making the nation’s economy one of the 20 largest markets in the world by the year 2020.

Temowo said there was a need to improve the industry’s marketing machinery and develop an action plan for actualising the financial inclusion strategy in the delivery of insurance products and services to the critical mass, comprising the low income earners.

He said the CIIN would focus on the maximisation of existing and emerging channels of distribution to deepen insurance penetration.

“The significance of insurance in the life of our nation cannot be over emphasised. These trying times are fraught with several risk factors for both individuals and corporate bodies. As risk managers, it behoves us to increase the tempo of our campaigns for insurance awareness in order to get more Nigerians to embrace insurance with minimal compulsion,” he said.

He said the CIIN had continued to explore all platforms of propagating insurance education and promoting general financial literacy.

“Our training and retraining programmes are being intensified, while creating new channels for capturing the younger generation and ensuring that they embrace insurance consciously as a course of study,” he said.

For this reason, Temowo said the institute sponsored the production of an insurance textbook for secondary schools and had commenced the donation of copies of the book to over 2,000 public secondary schools in the country through the state Ministries of Education.

The institute, he added, also acknowledged the dearth of insurance teachers in schools and had embarked on a train-the-trainer project in order to equip the teachers with the minimal skills required for teaching the subject.

He said this had reinforced the inclusion of insurance as a course of study in secondary schools by the Federal Government.

Temowo said, “The campaign for insurance awareness has become the collective concern of the entire insurance industry. The Insurance Industry Consultative Council, the body comprising all arms of the industry, has also taken positive steps towards sensitising government agencies on the pivotal role of insurance in nationhood.”

The CIIN boss said the council of the institute had also adopted measures geared towards involving all stakeholders in the campaign.

He said it had recently been appealing to insurance institutions to adopt a secondary or tertiary institution close to them and support such institutions with their employees as volunteer teachers who would take time off their official schedule to teach insurance courses in the schools.