20 Insurance Firms Subscribe to EAIPN As operators Count Gains

Barely two years after the formation of the Insurance industry’s Energy and Allied Insurance Pool (EAIPN), 20 insurance firms have subscribed to it, just as insurance industry operators said they have started reaping bountifully from the pool.

Before now, 14 insurance firms subscribed to it until recently when six more firms toed their line.

At a farewell press briefing organised by the Nigeria Insurers Assocation ( NIA), on behalf of its outgoing chairman, Godwin Wiggle, he said that the EAIPN has witnessed increase in the number of subscribers from 14 to 20 companies.

Wiggle during whose tenure the pool was formed and its technical committee inaugurated, said to ensure high performance and leverage on international experience, members of the pool have appointed African Re as manager to the pool.

He said formation of the pool has enabled operators to build technical and financial capacities as well as retain businesses that would have been taken outside the shores of Nigeria.

The Group Managing Director of Continental Reinsurance Plc, Dr. Femi Oyetunji told THISDAY recently that the Energy and Allied Insurance pool has been beneficial to Nigerian insurers.

He said but for the pool, oil multinationals operating in Nigeria, would have preferred to take their businesses to their captives in their home countries.

He also said without the pool, most of the energy businesses Nigerians bided to underwrite would have gone to European and American insurance firms most of who have Tripple ‘A’ rating.

The National Insurance Commission (NAICOM), towards the end of 2014 formed the EAIPN with a view to ensuring that more indigenous firms participate in insurance of oil and gas business in the country.

The businesses have for several years been taken abroad by the oil multinationals mainly for lack of technical and financial capacities by the indigenous firms.

But NAICOM, formed the Energy and Allied insurance committee to bridge the gap.

It also inaugurated a 14 man technical committee to oversee its function.

Insurance managers had expressed optimism that formation of the pool would boost their capacity and increase their participation in the insurance of the juicy oil and gas business.

Wiggle had in a telephone interview told THISDAY that the new board would ensure that indigenous underwriters henceforth handle more of the Nigerian oil and gas businesses that were hitherto taken abroad.

He said insurance being business of risk spread, the pool would organise indigenous underwriters in a way that will boost their capacity to handle the available energy businesses before taking any abroad.