Sovereign Trust Insurance, Harnessing Technology To Reach Customers, Dominate Market

SOVEREIGN TRUST INSURANCE, a non-life insurance company, with wide range of products and services tailored to meet customers’ needs in this interview with The Guardian Newspapers opens up on how it overcame the COVID years, plans to remain relevant in the market and its aim to be the numero uno in the industry.

In response to Nigeria’s changing economy, how is Sovereign Trust Insurance adapting its products and services to cater for its customers’ needs?

The truth remains that the Nigerian economy is passing through turbulent times. We have, stagflation, high level of inflation mixed with unemployment, prices of goods and services are rising daily, making cost of living to be very high too. There is constant depreciation of the naira and other happenings bringing hardship in the economy that make people not to embrace insurance as expected, because it is when one is able to take a three-square meal that he/she would think of insurance. This part of the world is not like the advanced countries where insurance is a compelling aspect of their life. In spite of the challenging economic environment, I can tell you with assurance that Sovereign Trust Insurance has continued to record a steady growth in her performance in the last 5 years. In 1999, we did N10.8 billion-premium income, in 2020 (year of Covid) we did N11.1 billion which is an increase of about three per cent despite the pandemic and its negative impact on most companies. In 2021, we had N12.7 billion and that is about 14 per cent increase on the COVID year. In 2022, we did N15.2 billion that is about 20% growth on previous year, while in 2023, we had N19.3 billion that’s about 27 per cent increase. Despite the turbulence in the economy and stern competition, we are pushing hard; striking all angles to ensure we are very relevant in the insurance subsector.

There is an aphorism that says: “Out of every Crisis Situations, there are Opportunities.” So, all we are doing is to identify the insurance opportunities inherent and latch on them. This has happened because of our dedicated, excellent staff and Management, who have been very committed to the goals & objectives of the organization. They are all out to ensure we carve out a niche for ourselves in this regard.

In addition to the general manpower doggedness, our business development team have been wonderful, they worked with Customer Centric Mindset to ensure our products are tailor-made to meeting the specific needs of our customers. What we have done is to ensure we don’t just offer everything to the public, but customized offering that will provide specific solutions to the needs of our teeming Clients and this has really helped to keep us in business.
Due to the economic situation that has made payment for insurance on annual basis a bit hard for some customers. we have also unbundled by providing half year cover, quarterly cover for our customers to make payment of premium very friendly, comfortable and convenient so as to seamlessly conform with the no premium no cover posture of the extant regulatory law.
Also, from the operational perspective, we have been able to roll out affordable grassroots products. The premium for some of these products is as low as N1,500. The patronage of these products has been very commendable as people latched on them to cover their risks. We also have a hybrid of Comprehensive and Third-Party Motor Insurance product called ‘Enhanced Third Party Insurance.’ It’s very affordable and it combines the benefits of both the comprehensive and third party policy. This product is cheap and selling like hotcake.
In the face of adversities such as economic downturns and the COVID-19 pandemic, how has Sovereign Trust Insurance prioritised the seamless continuation of its services?
There is no gainsaying that Covid actually negatively affected a lot of companies and some never recovered from it. Our experience in STI was actual different. Like I mentioned earlier, in the year of COVID, our turnover was more than the previous year. In 2019, we did N10.8 billion, while in the COVID year, we recoded N11.1 billion turnover. It would not have been possible if not for the visionary leadership of the organisation. Visionary leadership in the sense that, the Board and Management had in the past heavily invested in technology to drive our operations. With the advent of Covid, my ICT colleagues never had serious challenges deploying our technology to face the reality on hand. Our IT infrastructure is very robust such that it was seamlessly deployed for staff to work virtually and remotely. With this, we did not lose any customer, as we still provided quality operational services, risk management services and fulfilled claims obligations effectively.

What we did then was that, when claims were reported with supporting documents, with Google we were able to reasonably determine prices of items. We were able to use online platforms to adjust our claims and settlement offers were also released digitally from our houses. Claims payment were also transferred to the accounts of the claimants seamlessly and the process made us relevant. We did not lose any customer for want of service during the Covid era except those the impact of the pandemic negatively affected their businesses.

Could you provide specific instances of how Sovereign Trust Insurance leveraged innovation to enhance accessibility, convenience and efficiency in providing insurance services to its clients?

Sovereign Trust is a forward-looking organisation and has invested highly in technological infrastructure. One of our aims is to ensure business transformation through digitalization and improvement of our ICT infrastructures. As a matter of fact, we are leveraging technology to enhance operations, so that, we can be efficient and built more positive customer experience.

We have different platforms that would enable customers to access us easily without physical engagement. Right now, you can do insurance from the convenience of your house or the corner of your office. Our very robust website allows any customer to visit there to do insurance — buy any of our products. Within the website is our web portal, with an “Ai mechanism called Ugochi”. Ugochi will assist you to navigate and also respond to your needs and if there is any issue, it cannot respond to, it will refer you to a human agent who will immediately get across to you. So, at the comfort of your home, you can get insurance done

Outside that, we have installed digital platforms for our platinum and big premium customers to enable them do insurance from the comfort of their offices or homes with ease. With deployment of APIs our customers can do their insurance businesses, print their certificates, cover notes and generate their policies on their own. As they are doing these, their activities will be reflecting on our dashboard, so, we can monitor and always ensure we are on the same page. We also have a dedicated WhatsApp line through which you can engage us and get your insurance done. These are things we have put together to ensure that our work is seamless and we may not need to work physically in the office to provide insurance services. To a very large extent, we have been able to provide excellent service, by deploying technology to build a very good customer experience without having to meet with them physically.

In what ways have you impacted your host communities?

Well, I think, it is only a company that does not understand the concept and benefits of CSR that would not want go give back to the society where it’s operating. We just got a new portion of land in Ikeja, Lagos, to support Lagos State government, “Go Green agenda”. We are to beautify the place in line with Sovereign Trust CSR policy.

Our CSR is built on three cardinal points — HSE: Health, Sports and Environment. For the past 10 years, we have been beautifying Shitta Roundabout, Surulere. So, CSR is something we are proud of.

On sports, we were the official insurer of the Nigeria contingent to the All African Games in Algeria, the CAF Nations Cup in Ghana. We have done a lot in the football arena. In gulf, we sponsored Ibadan Gulf Course on a yearly basis. Towards the end of last month, we sponsored the Table Tennis Tournament in Ikoyi Club 1938 and have been doing this consistently. We have been giving back to the society by way of sports and by way of beautifying the environment.

In education, we have been creating Insurance awareness and enlightenment campaign among students in secondary and tertiary institutions. In Igbobi College, Yaba, we go there every year for a career talk; because we must catch them young. We know that if you build insurance into their psyche, they will want to imbibe the culture of insurance and risk management generally. Apart from Igbobi College, we have also sponsored similar programs at the University of Lagos (UNILAG). We have also promoted Career Talk in various varsities to create awareness of insurance among the students.

Currently, we provided LAWMA with work kits and also sponsored their conferences. These are some of the things we have done to give back to our host communities.

How does the company intend to further its market presence and provide services to a larger customer base?

For insurance, the future lies in retail. Right now, we have about 220 million people in Nigeria. It will be pretty difficult to effectively harness this opportunity physically, so, the way out is to deploy technology. What we intend doing is to expand our reach technologically to ensure that we harness and deepen penetration of our market, while sustaining the ones already in our portfolio. Having said that, the environment is changing, the market is changing, so we shall be very innovative in churning out products that meet demand of modern reality. We shall never be cut in the web of selling products that have lost their usefulness. Other thing that we will do is to create a more customer centric mindset to ensure that every customer will be endeared to the heart of Sovereign Trust. No Customer will do insurance with us and wouldn’t want a repeat purchase. We will also reinforce the STI Six Core Values with the acronym “SPIITE.” to realise this initiative. The “S” stands for Superior Customer Service. When you provide Superior Customer and cutting edge service to clients, they won’t leave you but act as ambassador and will preach the gospel of your brand.

The next ‘P’ stands for Professionalism, we will display high level of Skills, Knowledge, Competence in dealing with our Customers. We will be very dynamic and flexible in our operations.

The first ‘I’ stands for innovation. As I said earlier, going forward we will be very innovative and we are going to churn out products that will provide solution to the needs of our customers not just general services, but tailor-made solutions to their specific needs.

The next ‘I’ is integrity. STI is a company of integrity; our word is our bond. If we give you our word, you can go to bank with it.
“T” Stands for Team Spirit while the last ‘E‘ stands for empathy’. We empathise with our customers. If a customer suffers a claim, we provide empathy. We shall reinforce these core values among our staff so they can sleep, dream, eat and run with the core values. With these, the future of Sovereign Trust will be bright. We are going to hit the mark no matter the volatility or the turbulence of the economy.

The future big picture of the company is to be in the first five in the industry across all indices, continuously grow our revenue, raise more capital so as to transform to a holding company and deliver superior returns on investment. Thank you.