Worried by Nigeria’s low insurance penetration over the last decade pegged less than one per cent, stakeholders has called on regulators to put measures in place to promote insurance patronage by the citizens.
Only recently, the President Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria (CIIN) and Managing Director, Consolidated Hallmark Insurance Plc, Eddie Efekoha, called on the government to support the industry by ensuring the issuance of insurance compliance certificate is implemented.
Efekoha who made this call in an interview, stated that there was need for forceful and compulsory driving of sales of insurance, stressing that until people begin to show evidences of insurance whenever they seek something from government, underwriting business would not attain the desired heights.
According to him, six years after the former Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, raised the need for enforcement of insurance through issuance of compliance certificates to policyholders, nothing has been done to activate the initiative.
“The laws have not enabled us to enforce the compulsory insurances. This has handicapped all of us from taking the bull by the horns. Enforcement of compulsory insurances remained a gap we are yet to unraveled,” he said.
He called on all stakeholders to support the executive bill on insurance and ensure it empowers and transforms insurance operations.
“As there is an executive bill as insurance is concerned, we all have to gather all the resources we have to ensure some bites are introduced in it. We really need enforcement.
“Presently, is there any contract in Nigeria that anybody wants to bid and he is told until you produce insurance on where you reside or as an evidence to show their employees are insured they would not be qualify for such contracts? Until we get to that point, people would not embrace insurance. We need some empowerment, force and compulsion for insurance to really work,” he said.