Without ownership of the MDRI project, its chances of succeeding is slim - Oluyemi
Managing director/ CEO, Tespauruth Consulting Limited (TCL) in this interview with Modestus Anaesoronye reviews the insurance industry Market Development and Restructuring Initiative, assess its performance and how it can be reinvigorated to drive the gro
he Market Development and Restructuring Initiative (MDRI) is a regulator-led market development Plan to expand the width and depth of Nigeria’s insurance market. Launched in 2011 (shifted from the initial launch date of 2009).The market development initiative clearly is within the mandate of an industry regulator in a developing country like Nigeria, given the many market imperfections that are prominent in developing country economies.
Well, to be in a position to express informed opinions the first thing to do is to research the aims and objectives of MDRI, which seems to be both a medium term Vision Statement and Strategic Roadmap for the industry. Naturally, we made enquiries at the regulator (NAICOM), as well as other insurance industry sources. But first, a check was done on the NAICOM website for the MDRI document. The first shocker- the MDRI document meant to guide insurance industry growth and development was not available on NAICOM’S website! Other alternative efforts to obtain this crucial document came up negative.
This is surprising. What could have happened to the document?
Surprising indeed it is that a document supposedly agreed as a guide to action is not available for public/industry consumption on the insurance regulator’s website. But available on the website (on 2nd August 2019) are a set of Laws, Discussion papers, Regulations, Publications, Guidelines, and Circulars. It is not out of place to mention some of these: Guidelines- Approved Takaful Guidelines, Micro insurance Guidelines 2018; Regulations- Regulatory priority update on Statement of regulatory priorities, Brokers re-re-registration requirements; Discussion papersGuidelines on State governments implementation of compulsory insurance, Mutual organisations’, community-based and non-government organisations’ micro insurance agencies’ guidelines; Circulars- Nineteen of them, among which are : Directives on rendition of quarterly returns to NAICOM 29th September 2016, Annual quarterly regulatory returns template for Nigerian insurance industry, etc.
Really this is a concern for me. If there is a document that is meant to guide thought and action in the and position paper(s) of NAICOM will, of course, carry much weight. A Vision/strategy Paper cannot and must not be something exclusively written up on the laptop of a consultant, to the exclusion of the industry it is meant to serve, and then introduced to the operators after it is written up. That would be, from the onset, a guarantee that there would be no ownership of the Plan, from the industry arms. Secondly in the course of writing up the document, there will be necessity for a backand-forth interactive process of consultation among the parties, clarifying all grey areas, or areas on which there is less than full agreement by all parties. And then, there must of necessity be a Standing Committee drawn from all arms of the industry to carry on a comprehensive review of implementation, during the life of the Plan. But from what I said earlier, it is clear that my preference is for the crafting of a new document. It seems MDRI is a tired document, indeed, one that has hardly been implemented, or implemented with the required vigour.
You have not answered the question about how the insurance industry should go about crafting a new Vision and Strategy.
This is not such a huge assignment. You need to consider what a Vision Document/strategic Plan should contain. A Strategic Plan would include inter alia: A Vision Statement and a Mission Statement, Core Values agreed to by all parties (buy in), ASWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) Analysis, An assessment of industrycompetition, customers, and trends, probably along the lines of Professor Michael Porter’s famed Five Market Forces, Long term goals and objectives, Yearly objectives (broadly stated), and Action/ Tactical Plans (in outline).
Can you provide us some more detail on the constituents of what might be a new Vision and Strategy for the insurance industry?
I probably could go into a lot more detail, but such an exercise is probably one that is better left to Tespauruth Consulting Limited (TCL) the management consulting firm to handle. We may examine the detail later, but the above serves as an outline of what we believe needs to be done. It certainly is entirely appropriate in this season that heralds in a new profile of insurance industry, to have crafted a new Vision and Strategy, that is in more in tune with the demands of the emergent Nigerian insurance industry, and in particular the insurance industry’s customers.