Insurance: Who needs a foreign technical adviser?
QUITE SO OF TEN, IN NI GERIA, when the conversation shifts to finding solutions to the challenges and risks we face, and insurance is mentioned whether at policymaking level or otherwise, most participants view it as a subject meant for others and better left for another event.
For too long, we have viewed insurance as a study, profession or trade and completely failed to see it as what it is: our partner through life!
Insurance exists in practically every facet of our lives but we ignore it and when faced with the crisis of life, we often express regret and, at times, wonder why there is no aggressive awareness campaign around it.
Health, education, housing, transport, power, infrastructure, commerce, agriculture, mining, security, services, logistics, technology and just anything that engages us, and presents risks that we need to manage, has insurance suited to protect our investment at all times.
Unknown to us, every time we fail or hesitate to have that discourse on insurance, we miss the great opportunity to resolve the issues around those subjects.
Insurance As An Antidote
If we would for a moment consider the assertion of an anonymous philosopher on TIME, he said “Today is the tomorrow we spoke about yesterday”. It means that while discussing what we seek to do about our healthcare and education systems, for example, without insurance, we are like proceeding on mountain climbing with everything except water. When you know there will be risks and you decide to proceed without an adequate insurance programme, you have simply boosted the chances of failure of the project; something we do not discuss in the sense of insurance.
When we discuss plans and programmes intended to transform our lives but pay little or no attention to the present and future risks, and ignore suggestions to have risk management and insurance experts in the room, we ignore a critical determinant of sustainability and expose our investments to unforeseen circumstances.
What we say, commonly, when these risks crystallize, is “That was the act of God, there’s nothing anybody could have done about it”. If we have lived this way all these years, should this season of COVID-19 not have opened our minds to the value of insurance?
Prompted By Foreign Enquiry
Sometimes, foreign governments and investors have enquired about the state of our insurance sector in the process of decision making either towards direct investments or funding infrastructural projects. In response, we submit relevant documents to try and assure them of our strength but when the billions of Naira in the Balance Sheets of our insurers are converted to US Dollars or Euros, they are forced to ponder a while, subsequently seek to minimize the insurance contracts they do locally and cede most back home along with the premiums.
So, if we are not seeking to embrace insurance, enhance our local capacity and retain opportunities from foreign investments, we might continue on this cycle that gives us marginal growth but gross poverty.
We do not need a foreign technical adviser on risk management and insurance to tell us that we need a virile insurance sector to support the long term infrastructural projects we are doing with loans.
Even when we have highly capitalised insurers after the ongoing process of recapitalization, the diminishing value of the Naira will unlikely take us beyond where we are regarding the big ticket commercial risks.
Forced to look inwards for growth opportunities from our increasing youth population, the Nigerian market might need that foreign technical adviser with requisite skills and proven track record to communicate insurance in simple easy-to-use digital solutions, little wonder we have increasing interests from abroad.
As it becomes obvious that the old pattern of selling insurance as a requirement to fulfil legal conditions is ineffective due to challenges of enforcement, insurance practitioners are having to learn how to promote and sell value to potential and existing insurance policyholders. Demand for usage based insurance is heightening same as the desire to conclude purchases leveraging online platforms.
I have also found out that trying to explain insurance in local languages, not only makes the listening public become interested but also enables their engagement using mobile devices so long as the awareness campaigns are sustained.
Making insurance available is certainly something the foreign insurance brands know how to do, so we should expect to see more foreign nationals in Nigeria’s insurance sector.
Our task should be getting them to share, download and integrate their knowledge and skills within the insurance companies they work.
The insurance industry in Nigeria is well positioned to excel even now and we must all be ready to do the job.