Former executive director and chief client officer at AXA Mansard, Rashidat Adebisi,
has called for a major restructuring of the insurance sector, arguing that achieving the government’s $1 trillion economy target requires moving beyond incremental changes to wholesale re-architecture of financial infrastructure.

Speaking at an exclusive media session in Lagos last week, Adebisi, who spent over two decades in institutional finance, unveiled ‘The Re-Architecture Project’, a strategic roadmap designed to align the insurance industry with macroeconomic ambitions while addressing the sector’s persistently low penetration rate.

“Insurance is the secret sauce in our economy. It is the net that allows a country to jump higher.

Nigeria is not lacking capital; we are lacking invisible infrastructure – specifically trust, access and regulatory clarity,” Adebisi stated.

The insurance veteran highlighted the sector’s struggle to achieve meaningful growth, noting that penetration has actually declined from just over one per cent when she entered the industry 21 years ago to between 0.3 and 0.5 per cent today.

This compares unfavorably with the African continental average of 3 per cent and represents fewer than 10 million individually insured Nigerians despite an adult population exceeding 100 million.

Central to Adebisi’s blueprint is a strategic reframing of the Nigeria Insurance Industry Reform Act (NIIRA) 2025, which she described as a watershed moment for the industry rather than merely a regulatory burden.

“Those who view compliance as a burden will struggle; those who see it as a competitive advantage will thrive,” she noted, identifying what she termed “policy fluency” as a core leadership competency for the coming decade.

The reform act’s emphasis capital recalibration, stronger governance frameworksand enhanced consumer protection, according to Adebisi, represents the institutional rigour necessary to support a trillion-dollar economy.

She said the industry must move from managing scale within silos to creating interoperable ecosystems that serve the majority of Nigerians.

Addressing the exclusion of over 60 per cent of Nigeria’s workforce employed in the informal sector, Adebisi emphasized the need for digital-first models designed for African realities.

She revealed her involvement as co-founder of FILEIT Financial Solutions, which has developed the FILEApp to reimagine tax compliance for SMEs and informal entrepreneurs.

“We designed the solution with English and Pidgin to start with, and we are building speech-to-text capabilities in Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa,” she explained, illustrating the importance of linguistic inclusion in financial technology.

The application aims to move informal sector participants from economic invisibility into formal digital tax rails, simultaneously unlocking insurance coverage and credit ecosystems Adebisi asked.

Drawing parallels with the banking sector innovations like BVN and NIBSS interoperability, Adebisi called for collaborative infrastructure development across insurance companies.

She pointed to her current role as chair of the steering committee driving innovation for the Nigerian Insurance Association, where industry-wide initiatives on identity management and claims databases are being launched.