INAUGURAL SPEECH BY MR KUNLE AHMED AT THE INVESTITURE CEREMONY AS THE 26TH CHAIRMAN OF THE NIGERIAN INSURERS ASSOCIATION

Protocols

It is a pleasure to welcome all of you this evening despite holding this event on a weekday. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules to honour me and our Association.

Let me also thank all the members of the Nigerian Insurers Association, particularly, the Governing Council members and the CEOs of insurance companies for trusting me to lead this Association. My election into this role is a testament to the confidence you have all reposed in me, and it is a call to greater service to all the member companies and the insurance industry as a whole. The confidence of your support and the desire to serve greatly influenced my decision to accept the exalted position and serve as the 26th Chairman of the Nigerian Insurers Association.

In the months leading to the 2024 Annual General Meeting where I was elected as the Chairman, I spent quite some time with some of the past Chairmen of our Association and have learned a bit more of the unwritten story about the Association, the sacrifices of the past leaders and their creativity to ensure the Association remains an ongoing concern and retains its relevance in the Nigerian insurance industry. The Nigerian Insurers Association has come a long way in the last 53 years, recording modest achievements. I would like to thank all past Chairmen and past Director Generals of our great Association for laying the solid foundation upon which the Association is standing on today.

Global events continue to shape the global geo-political environment. The world was slowly recovering from the effects of Covid 19 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but the Israel/Gaza war which is potentially developing into a full-scale Middle East conflict continues to threaten world peace. The global economy is estimated to decline from 3.3% in 2023 to 3.2% in 2024 and is projected to improve modestly to 3.3% in 2025.

On the home front, the country is battling socio-political and economic challenges, including security issues, inflationary pressures, volatile foreign exchange risks, interest rate increases, elevated cost of living exacerbated by increases in the cost of petrol, power, and pockets of floods across some parts of the country. The government is addressing these various challenges through the implementation of various measures but the effects of all these various socio-political and economic challenges is the escalating risks for both individuals and businesses, especially small-scale businesses. Amidst all these challenges, there are opportunities, especially in the areas of infrastructure, technology, mining, financial services, and agriculture, it is important that the enabling environment is structured to enable businesses to mine these opportunities. It is heartwarming that the Foreign Direct Investment in Nigeria was $3.3m at the end of Q1 2024, which is almost equal to the $3.9m reported for the whole of 2023. Overall, Nigerian economic growth has been projected to grow from 2.9% in 2023 to 3.1% in 2024 and moderate at 3% in 2025.

Insurance products remain one of the most tested and trusted products to mitigate risks when the economy is buoyant especially when there are economic challenges. Although the insurance sector’s contribution to GDP, which hovered around 0.3% in the last five years is now 0.52% as of Q2, 2024, we believe we still need to do a lot more to unlock the potential of the sector.

Superintending over the affairs of an Association like ours with members at different stages of development and maturity can be challenging but interesting. Notwithstanding the stage of development of any insurance company, the following issues, amongst others, are of utmost interest to all of us.

Customer Satisfaction – Ensuring the satisfaction of our clients and partners should be of interest to all of us. Ease of onboarding clients, provision of advisory services, and elimination, to the barest minimum, of conflicts during claims processing are some of the actions that can potentially increase customer satisfaction. “A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all” – Michael LeBoeuf

Growth & Impact on the Economy – The challenge of growing our revenue is common to all of us. The industry achieved the N1trn Gross Premium Written target in 2023, eleven years after the initial target date of 2012. Increased growth will improve our contribution to GDP and insurance penetration in the country.

Profitability & Impact on our Communities –. Insurance companies are business entities and we all desire to make profit, of course, not at the expense of fairness to our customers. Most companies are aware that there is a nexus between customer satisfaction and profitability. Companies that are making profits are also able to contribute and make social and economic impacts on their operating communities.

The insurance business is rooted in agelong principles but as insurers, we now need to reshape the insurance models to address the current needs of our clients (and potential clients) and position the industry for the future. We can’t stick to the old ways of serving our customers or dress the old ways in colourful garbs and expect to achieve the quantum growth that we all desire. The actions and activities of the Association are therefore geared towards addressing the above-desired impacts amongst others. Together we shall confront our current challenges, remain agile and forward-thinking, collaborate with industry stakeholders to grow the market, and seek innovative ways to respond to the ever-dynamic needs of our customers.

Specifically, after a critical review of our state of development, I have chosen the theme of my tenure as “Digital Disruption & Social Insurance, Re-shaping of our Traditional Models. Under this broad theme, we shall be focusing on the following four strategic imperatives.

Advocacy & Inter-Governmental Relationships

The government and its agencies formulate policies and issue guidelines that guide business activities in our country. During my tenure, we will be working with all government agencies on the need to include insurance in the formulation of their policies and programmes. My predecessors moved the needle significantly on this topic, but advocacy topics are never static. Specifically, NIA, under my leadership will work with other stakeholders to do the following:

*Harness opportunities arising from government initiatives. We will focus on harnessing emerging opportunities for the whole industry including actively engaging and correcting erroneous impressions/opinions about insurers, their capacities, and capabilities. For example, we commenced engagements and will soon be working with some of the states of the federation that do not have insurance for their workers nor structure to ensure the citizens can purchase insurance cover. This process will be a win-win situation for both the citizens and workers of the states, the states themselves, and the insurance industry. We will also be working with some of our states and exploring new areas of business collaboration to expand and deepen the market.

*Collaborate with all stakeholders and work with the National Assembly on the passage of the Nigeria Insurance Reform Bill. The bill from the draft exposed to the public is expected to update the laws governing the practice of insurance, repeal some other obnoxious laws currently impacting the practice of insurance negatively, and give our regulator the legal backing to enforce the compulsory insurances.

*Collaborate with insurance industry stakeholders on the implementation of the industry’s 10-year Industry Strategic Roadmap.

Digital Innovation

The insurance sector is the most misunderstood and we seem to be the slowest in embracing digital innovation and solutions. I will be paying special attention to this topic so that we can better position ourselves for emerging opportunities and be in a position to properly serve the majority of our existing and prospective clients. The initial cost of most digital innovation can be very high, but if we collaborate as an industry, the cost to each company will be more than affordable. I will be working with all of you and selected partners on the set of innovations that will propel our industry to the next level.

*We will launch an innovation challenge and invite various selected partners to pitch solutions for some of our current processes. We will evaluate the pitches and select the solution that can potentially thrust the industry forward.

*NIA currently has the NIID & NIIP Platforms for onboarding our motor and marine customers, we will explore the possibility of digital collation and tracking of claims payment to delight our customers and reduce insurance fraud.

*The industry financial results are usually released one or two years after a particular calendar year, NIA’s efforts to ensure prompt collation of those results have not yielded the desired result. We will be exploring, in conjunction with our regulator, the possibility of digitally collating those results to ensure the state of affairs of our industry is easily accessible and remains current. I appeal for the co-operation of all members on this initiative.

*Upgrade the digital capabilities of NIA Secretariat to meet and respond to the growing demands of the public.

Claims & Technical Excellence

Insurance companies only issue a promissory note after consummating a transaction, the test of the promise happens only when a claim is reported. The issue is no longer whether insurance companies pay claims or not. In 2023, the insurance industry paid N536.5 billion in claims, a 54% growth over the claims paid in 2022. However, there is still some work to be done because companies will be unable to maximise the budget on publicity and media campaigns without paying attention to the ease of making a claim and the improvement of the claim process. We will work with market stakeholders to self-regulate and enforce market best practices amongst members from the point of onboarding a client to claims payment. We must continually look for a reason to pay a claim, rather than look for a reason not to pay a claim. In addition, we will also be focussed on the following:

*Activities and programmes that seek to always put claims payment on the front burner, including creating, at different levels of NIA, committees that will be charged with the task of discussing and recommending improvements and resolving claims disputes with the insuring public and amongst members.

*Collaborate with all stakeholders, especially, the Nigerian Council of Registered Insurance Brokers (NCRIB) to ensure the provision of full underwriting information. Inadequate information and lack of clarity at the point of onboarding the client is a precursor for a conflict at the point of claim.

*Ensure standardization of pricing to the extent that each client is charged the price that is commensurate with their risk. Detailed information about a risk including the survey and the implementation of the survey recommendations can potentially attract a pricing that is fair to all.

*Collaborate with industry stakeholders to ensure Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) is just not only a declaration in our annual reports, but its principles are integrated into our underwriting guidelines.

*Research and collaborate with stakeholders both locally and internationally on how to mitigate the effect of inflation and other vagaries of the economy on claims payout.

Education & Human Capacity Development.

In recent past, we have all been focused and rightfully so on actuarial capacity development. We will continue to support initiatives that will drive increase in the number of actuaries in the market. However, because of the recent increase in emigration out of Nigeria, there has been a noticeable gap in technical underwriting capacity and there is an urgent need to bridge the gap. We will collaborate with the Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria (CIIN) in transforming learning within the industry and partner with various institutions to cover identified gaps in the market.

Insurance awareness is still very low in our country, where there is some knowledge about insurance, the knowledge about the practice and structure of the insurance business is almost non-existent. I commend member companies who currently run some awareness campaigns through various media. NIA ‘s various programmes on radio is also currently making waves, I will continue to support this programme, and deepen its content, whilst also exploring the possibility of starting a weekly feature in a newspaper. We need to also have materials on insurance in the new media to complement what we have in the traditional media. We will also collaborate with the Insurers Committee on the plan to birth an insurance TV series.

In our quest to catch them young, we will institute a Quiz, Debate and Essay competition on insurance amongst secondary school students and collaborate with the CIIN on support and internship opportunities for university students. We already started this; we had a debate competition amongst secondary schools as part of the activities for this investiture ceremony.

All these initiatives must lead to products that speaks to the needs of our customers, process improvement that ensures our clients are served seamlessly, innovations that enables our clients and prospective clients transacts insurance business from onboarding to claims from the comfort of their homes and offices.

It is clear that to achieve success, we will need the support and co-operation of industry stakeholders particularly our industry regulator, National Insurance Commission (NAICOM), the Nigerian Council of Registered Insurance Brokers (NCRIB), the Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria (CIIN), the Institute of Loss Adjusters (ILAN), and the Association of Registered Insurance Agents (ARIAN) in achieving our ambitions to improve customer satisfaction and consequently insurance penetration. We believe that the current currency of our market is collaboration amongst stakeholders, we need to continually sustain it.

I would like to seize this opportunity to reassure our regulator NAICOM, that we will continue to co-operate and work closely with them on our programmes and all other initiatives that seeks to improve customers’ journey and deepen insurance penetration. We acknowledge and appreciate the efforts of the Commission in recent times to deepen the market by working with various government agencies to canvas the inclusion of insurance in their various initiatives. There is more to be done, and you can count on us.

To the members of NIA, I recognise the improvements we have recorded especially in the last couple of years. However, we are not anywhere close to where we want to be. With the likely passage of the Nigerian Insurance Industry Bill and the implementations of its provisions, coupled with the implementation of the industry’s 10-year strategic plan and our other initiatives, the industry will be awash with more opportunities thereby increasing the expectations from all of us. We will therefore be challenging ourselves to be more creative, innovative in serving our customers, to remove ambiguities from our policy documents and ensure that we are always fair to our clients. We equally need to re-shape our traditional models; this will put us in a better position to meet the ever-evolving needs of our clients.

Once again, let me thank all the past chairmen for their continued commitment to the Association. To my predecessor, Mr. Olusegun Ayo Omoshein, you have set very high standards, I assure you that we would raise the bar a notch higher under my tenure. We would build on your achievements and focus more on areas that require improvements whilst managing emerging challenges.

I also appreciate our partners in the media for their engagement and support in giving publicity to the activities of the Association and sharing feedback of the insuring public with us. Our partnership will continue to evolve for the benefit of our members and the insurance industry in general.

Let me at this point also appreciate the support and encouragement received from my team in AXA Mansard, early signs show that this journey will be demanding but I trust that with your continued support, we will accomplish the task.

To my adorable wife, Adedotun Omosalewa, thank you for keeping the home front together with uncommon dexterity. My travels and the number of days away from home will likely increase in the coming months, I count on your continued support. I also appreciate the support of my children and my brothers and sisters.

This investiture ceremony is about me, but I won’t be doing the job alone, I will be supported by members of the Governing Council, especially the principal officers. I would like to invite to the podium the principal officers of the Association for recognition.

I cannot end this speech without thanking the Investiture Planning Committee led by my sister, Mrs. Ebelechukwu Nwachukwu, and ably assisted by Mr. Babatunde Fajemirokun and other 25 strong members of the Committee. I also acknowledge the support of all the staff of the Association, led by the Director General, Mrs. Bola Odukale, and the Director of Operations, Mr. Lanre Ojuola.

Thank you all for organising this memorable investiture ceremony despite the limited time.

In closing, whilst I wholeheartedly accept to lead the NIA as its 26th Chairman, I look forward to working closely with the Principal Officers, Governing Council members, all Chief Executive Officers, the Director General, and Management & Staff of the Association, learning from your insights and ideas.I am confident that together, we will achieve remarkable things to the glory of God and the benefits of the Association.

Once again, thank you all for this incredible opportunity to serve and I pledge my total commitment to the ideals of the Association and to uphold the principles of integrity, transparency, and excellence that define our profession.

Thank you, all & God Bless.