The Sun News Online

Group Managing Director, Universal Insurance Plc, Mr. Cyril Ajagu has a vision of taking the company to all parts of the world. The company with a strong catchement market in the eastern part of the country recently recapitalized to N3billion to remain in business.

Ajagu in an interview with Daily Sun in his office said with an increase in capitalization, plans are underway to move the company and its services into all nooks and crannies of Nigeria with the establishment of more branches.
“We are opening branches in different parts of the country,” Ajagu said on the company’s branch network expansion project.

But he was quick to add that the expansion project will not end in Nigeria.
According to him, Universal Insurance – as the name suggests – was one incorporated with the vision of reaching out to the entire world with its various brands of products.
Ajagu, therefore, stated that Nigeria serves more as a short-term plan of actualizing the vision of the founders of the company.

He disclosed that negotiations are currently ongoing to float branches in some west African states.
In the long term, he said, the company would move into the African continent and further spread its tentacles to all nooks and crannies of the world.
He said: “We will be opening branches in few countries in West Africa. We will go into the African continent. After our regional expansion, we hope to take our services to other continents. The name Universal implies that our target is the whole world; that is our ultimate goal.”
Ajagu also spoke on the overall state of the Nigerian insurance industry, especially the chalange of increasing awereness on the benefits of insurance to attract more patronage from nigerians.
Excerpts:

Effect of consolidation
The consolidation has actually affected the insurance industry in so many positive ways. It has afforded the insurance sector an opportunity to have a bigger, better, and deeper financial capacity to take on more risks in oil and gas, cabotage, and other big ticket risks. The consolidation exercise has also given the insurance industry the capacity to participate actively in the nation’s continuing economic reform, real estate development, and topflight asset management. So, with the consolidation, we have a re-engineered insurance sector that can compete favourably in the financial services sector, offer better products and services, pay claims promptly, and record excellent profit margins.

NAICOM’s regulation
In fairness to the sector’s regulatory body, the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) has evolved and they are still evolving. As the regulator evolves, that which it regulates evolves because everything has to do with evolution in this industry and every other industry. NAICOM has to set the pace and continue to train and retrain its workforce to steer the activities of the sector efficiently. I know that the current commissioner for insurance as a thorough professional sticks to his word, one who will not compromise when it comes to issues that border on ethics, professionalism, and good corporate governance.

Today, clients who have issues with claims payment can approach NAICOM and expect to get a fair hearing from the regulatory body. This development is good for the industry and all the commission has to do is to continue seeking avenues through which it can create a level playing field for all operators, mete out sanctions without fear or favour, and join forces with operators to deepen the market and enhance insurance awareness and patronage in Nigeria.

Financial targets for Universal
We are targeting over N3billion as net premium, and also expect to achieve profit after taxation in excess of N600 million. But I must tell you with all sense of modesty that these targets are conservative; we are working towards ensuring that we exceed them by the end of the current financial year. The trend we are witnessing now is indicative of the fact that we will realize this ambition. We are a company that is proactive in nature and efficient in service delivery. We believe in creating wealth for our stakeholders and delighting our clients with technology-driven service delivery. Our strategies for achieving our goals are proving to be effective and at the end of the day all we are looking at is to add value to the lives of our clients, stakeholders and shareholders.

Branch expansion
Our branch network is in progress. We are opening branches in different parts of the country.
We will be opening branches in few countries in West Africa. We will go into the African continent. After our regional expansion, we hope to take our services to other continents. The name Universal implies that our target is the whole world; that is our ultimate goal.

We are aware of the fact that the market in Nigeria is quite huge and we are positioning the Universal brand to take full advantage of emerging opportunities. Our branch expansion strategy is driven by exhaustive market research that ensures we don’t just expand for the sake of expanding or keeping up with competition. We place high premium on what kind of value our presence in any market will add to our clients. So, the expansion work is ongoing, we are making good progress and formidable structures are being erected to ensure that we provide total insurance solutions and efficient risk management services to our clients.

Growth in insurance stocks
Increase in awareness and the economic reform can be said to be factors that are driving the growth of insurance stocks in the capital market. Some people think that insurance stocks are not good, but that is due to lack of understanding or ignorance, which is a big disease. The fact that insurance stocks here do not rise in Nigeria is because within us we don’t understand what insurance is and because the awareness is not there. You practically cannot do any business in this world without insurance. So, people are just beginning to know and appreciate the importance of insurance and this is bringing about positive changes for the sector in the market.

Sustaining the share price growth tempo
The awareness should be double edged actually. The awareness should be to the insuring public and greater awareness should be from the insurance sector. You don’t give that which you don’t have and insurance is all about integrity. It is all about prompt delivery, providing succour to the people that came to insure with you.

So, you need to create the awareness because if you don’t tell yourself the truth you can’t tell other people the truth, that’s the basic fact of life and they say we shall know the truth and the truth shall set us free. The insuring industry should look inside and continuously look and examine itself for best practices, good service delivery, for better risk analysis, better advice to the insuring public and better creation of awareness to insuring public. For you to create awareness to people you need to be aware. A teacher cannot come and teach that which he doesn’t know. As the awareness is growing we need to sustain ourselves.

In universal we do training and retraining both local and foreign, and then we summit articles and we talk with our friends. Things like rate cutting I mean why you want to go and cut your rate in that case you don’t plan to pay the claims.

Claims payment in Universal
Very prompt I must say. We occupy one of the enviable positions of having one of the least claims portfolios in this country. We just don’t take business for taking business. We won’t take your car insurance when we have not seen the car, we have not examined it, we don’t know how old it is. We don’t take a life insurance of somebody who is in the hospital and is about to die. It might look politely strong but it is the truth because you are going to take somebody else money and pay to another person.

If you are a smoker that smokes ten packets a day, your insurance should be different from the person who does not smoke at all. You don’t go and insure a house and there is no fire exit, there is no fire extinguisher. A lot of rate cutting happens because people don’t have intention to pay. And the people they are insuring their thing they don’t bother, they say ok give me this rate this is Nigerian factor. No! Nigerian factor should not be in. Nigeria is one of the wonderfully blessed economies in this world so we ought to take our pride of place in the world. And Universal is set to be part of that.

Human capital development
For us we encourage people because we believe in empowerment. There is no reason why a graduate in this country will not work and live wherever he or she wants to, drive the kind of car he or she wants to. It has to do with planning and it has to do with a good company. In our company we made a point of duty to them, as you come into this company, you don’t have to be 50 years experience. 50 years experience that does not add value is worthless us. You can have a five year experience and if your are a bubbling person that just came out from school and you are ready to roar, then we will take you on, because you have to learn and learn on the job.

But most importantly you have to be loyal; integrity is very important because we are in the business of integrity. And then as you give to the company the company will give to you. We believe in empowering staff, give you a car, give you a house, loan, give you the computer, give you the things that you need to work with. Whether you tell me good morning or not it doesn’t matter, deliver you target because we told the public we have three billion. So if your own is to give N100 million and the company’s own is to give you a car, house we do that to you. We sign off and if you deliver it in one day then you take holidays for the rest of the time. Incidentally we have a paradigm shift in our service and that’s our principle in universal.

Universal share price growth
First of all, it is divine. Secondly, we are very proactive. You came in here and there is not any protocol. We empower people to do their job. You want me to come to insure your house, if I come to the house; I have to look at the hygiene of the house. I need to check out if you cook with firewood inside your house. The moment we take money from you we get that money to start sweating. We deploy it; we take a percentage we share with our co-insurers. We monitor your investment so that you go home and we go home in a win-win situation.

We are not only in insurance. But you cannot do only insurance and not have a retaining capacity. You cannot do business of $1million, $100 million without having $300 million talking on your behalf in different things that you can pull on. Here that is what we are looking at. We have different strategies, different scenarios to add value, to create more awareness, and then use the value addition from other people with our strategic alliances.

Edge over competitors
The first most important edge is transparency and corporate governance. We started our private placement and within two months we have concluded everything. We listed February, and for three weeks we were there. We listed on a Monday, on Thursday, the certificates were out, monies were returned and everything was done and we listed in the next three days.