Insurance Premium to Hit N600 Billion in 2020

Stories by Ebere Nwoji

Insurance sector overall premium will rise to N600billion by the year 2020, if the industry operators are keen on development of micro insurance segment.

This view was expressed by the Head Retail Business Development, Leadway Assurance, Mr. Tunji Amokade.

Amokade, who stated this while delivering a lecture on ‘Micro Insurance Business in Nigeria’ at a one day training for journalists, organised by the Leadway Assurance Company Limited, noted that out of over 170 million population in Nigeria, less than 3.5 million have insurance cover, pointing out that this was why the industry’s premium was put at N435 billion as at 2017.

He said industry authority has projected that this year, the industry’s premium would grow to N471 billion, N530 billion by 2019 and N591 billion in 2020.

He said this could hit N600billion in 2020, depending on the ability and efforts of the operators in driving the retail insurance segment.

He said micro insurance is the only way to deepen insurance penetration in the country because it targets at mass market.

Furthermore, he said that the micro insurance can develop if insurance sector operators look critically at the market to develop solutions that suit their market.

The prevailing difficulty in deepening insurance penetration in the country, according to him, was due to the cash based nature of Nigeria’s economy noting that developed countries where insurance penetration is high achieved that because their economy was credit based.

He listed key factors to micro insurance growth in Nigeria as demographic, disposable income, growing middle class, innovative products distribution channels and flexible payment option.

According to him, insurers should pay more attention to retail insurance which he described as ocean market that has not been infected by the shark than the big ticket businesses that dictate the price they want to pay for insurance policies.