The President, Professional Insurance Ladies Association (PILA), has stressed the need for insurance industry awareness to address low penetration in the country.

The president, Nkechi Margaret Moore, made the call at the fitness walk to mark its 50th anniversary at the weekend, in Lagos.

According to her, “We are using the walk to mark the 50th anniversary of the association and at the same time, we are using the walk to also preach insurance and its benefits to Nigerians.

The walk is not going to be limited to the road alone; we will also have it in the markets to educate the market men and women on the need for them to buy fire insurance for their wares and properties; the need for them to take group life insurance for their various groups,” she explained.

Margaret Moore also urged the members of the association to take fitness walks as a habit in whatever they are doing to see the association in its 100 years to come.

She added that PILA also championed the establishment of the African Insurance Women’s Association (AIWA) which was admitted as a member of the African Insurance Organisation (AIO) and inaugurated at a side event during the just concluded 49th AIO Conference in Algiers, Algeria.

In the country today, there is low insurance awareness both in formal and informal settings. People in governance, who should be the promoter of such a concept in the market, hardly understand what insurance is and can do for them. That is why, even though, the government is the single largest consumer of insurance products, a lot of government assets are still uninsured at the federal and state levels. Similarly so, in the private sector, insurance penetration is an eyesore and the worst of it is in the informal sector whose players have an age-long belief that insurance is a scam.