By Nike Popoola

The Group Managing Director, Mutual Benefits Assurance Plc, Mr. Akin Ogunbiyi, has said that if the industry embraces a unified means of underwriting the compulsory insurance policies, the sector will earn N3tn from the products.

Ogunbiyi spoke to our correspondent in an exclusive interview, after leading about 3,000 risk advisors of the company on an insurance awareness trek to mark the beginning of the enforcement of compulsory insurance in Lagos on Tuesday.

The insurance policies are: Motor Vehicle Third Party Insurance, Builders Liability Insurance, Statutory Group Life Insurance, Occupiers Liability Insurance and Health Care Professional Indemnity Insurance.

Ogunbiyi said, “Although, the National Insurance Commission is targeting N1.1tn premium for the sector in 2012, if we mobilise resources together to support this initiative and employ a unified means to underwrite these products, we will achieve N3tn premium.”

He said that statistics revealed that there were about 22 million family units in Nigeria while Lagos had close to 250,000 housing units.

He explained that if the insurers and brokers would pursue the insurance of these buildings by going to meet the landlord associations, they would ensure faster compliance and earn huge premium from the building insurance policies.

Ogunbiyi noted that the government, under the regulatory authority of NAICOM, had given the sector the necessary backing that it needed to achieve its goal.

According to him, if the industry has a unified policy to underwrite the products, it will enhance its implementation and prevent the occurrence of fake insurance certificates in the industry.

The Mutual Benefits boss said, “This is what is done in Cameroon, we should come out with a clear consortium of all registered insurance companies, agree on the proportion and have a single platform to underwrite it because before you know it, papers will soon start to fly everywhere and people will fake it like motor insurance.”

Ogunbiyi, who noted that Mutual Benefits had a branch in Cameroon, said that in Cameroon, the third party insurance was just one single policy that was subscribed to by all the insurance companies.

He said that if the industry was issuing only one certificate, it would be easy for the insuring public to identify it.

He pointed out that the implementation of the compulsory insurance laws was not a thing that a single insurance company could do on its own. For this reason, he added that Mutual Benefits decided to take the lead in the insurance awareness campaign by organizing the insurance trek.

Source: Punch