Elumelu tasks industry players on digitalisation

The Chairman of Heirs Holdings, Tony Elumelu, has called on the insurance industry’s practitioners to embrace technology in their operations to drive market penetration.

This was Elumelu’s submission at the Nigerian Council of Registered Insurance Brokers (NCRIB) 60th anniversary in Lagos, themed, ‘60 Years of Insurance Broking: Redefining the Practice and the Practitioners’.

According to him, insurance penetration in Nigeria is still very low, compared with other countries like South Africa, which has the highest penetration on the continent.

He said: “Opportunities are huge in the Nigerian market and I strongly believe that technology is about to disrupt the status quo. It is the only way that penetration can increase.”

He also urged the stakeholders on the right sanctions to be given for unethical practices to encourage more Nigerians to accept insurance.

Speaking on the need for collaboration for seamless know your customer (KYC) protocol adaptation, Elumelu said: “We have the banking sector that is being regulated and they do their KYC on customers with BVN and so many other things and then the insurance sector also goes through that same KYC.

“Why don’t we collaborate in a way that once a client who is a customer of a bank can be verified, then we take it that the KYC has been done and then we leapfrog that immediately to serve the customer? That is a collaborative action we would need to put in place to change our sector.”

He also appealed to the leadership of the council to lead the war against unethical practices, such as premium rate cutting, delayed premium remittance, unremitted premium, overloading of premium, returned premium and fake documents, that have been the bane of growth.

He listed other fraudulent claims, collusion to defraud, misselling, unhealthy competition, misrepresentations and manipulation of policy conditions and self-enrichment disguised as marketing expenses, among others as unethical practices.

The Commission for Insurance, Sunday Thomas, called for more collaboration and effort in enabling access to insurance, stating that the industry could do more in this prospect.

He said: “It is a fundamental truth that the insurance sector exists for other sectors to thrive. A lot has been achieved, but there is still more work to be done. Until insurance becomes the oxygen that homes and other industries breathe, and a subject that is known to everyone, we have not arrived”.

The President, of NCRIB, Rotimi Edu, appreciated Elumelu for delivering the keynote speech at the event, while committing on behalf of the Council to do what is necessary to deepen insurance penetration in the country.

He said: “The Council is already creating avenues through strategic engagements with notable governmental and non-governmental institutions to deepen the industry in the country”.