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Business

Troyka Holdings Chair, Biodun Shobanjo, Inducted into Loeries Hall of Fame

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Zenith Bank, NEM, Seplat, AIICO, Dangote Cement, First HoldCo Recognised as Nigeria’s High-Performing Companies

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Finance Min, Wale Edun, to Keynote FiBOP Annual Confab Oct 18

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Niteon Unveils First African Manufacturers Bank to Unlock $200bn Digital Export Market

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FG Boosts MSME Financing with NCGC Initiative

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ICT

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Governors, NCC Set for Broadband Awareness Forum Oct 20

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Capital Market

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SEC DG: Accountability, Transparency will Boost Investor Confidence in Capital Market

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Insurance

13-year-old Rhema-Love Abraham Emerges Winner of 2025 Heirs Insurance Essay Championship

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Leadway Assurance: Insurance Company of the Year at 2025 BAFI Awards

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Heirs Insurance Group Announces Inaugural Travel Festival: A Call for Inclusive Travel Ecosystem for Africans

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Sovereign Trust Insurance Celebrates 2025 Customer Service Week

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Leadway: 55 Years of Innovation, Expanding Financial Access, Inclusion Across West Africa

Leadway, one of Nigeria’s foremost non-banking financial services and...

Business

Troyka Holdings Chair, Biodun Shobanjo, Inducted into Loeries Hall of Fame

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Zenith Bank, NEM, Seplat, AIICO, Dangote Cement, First HoldCo Recognised as Nigeria’s High-Performing Companies

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Finance Min, Wale Edun, to Keynote FiBOP Annual Confab Oct 18

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Niteon Unveils First African Manufacturers Bank to Unlock $200bn Digital Export Market

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FG Boosts MSME Financing with NCGC Initiative

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ICT

Konga Partners Verve to Delight Customers with Free Shopping Vouchers

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Capital Market

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SEC DG to Cadets:  Invest Early, Long Term to Create Wealth

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SEC DG: Accountability, Transparency will Boost Investor Confidence in Capital Market

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SEC DG: Digital Assets Represent $10tn Opportunity by 2030

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Insurance

13-year-old Rhema-Love Abraham Emerges Winner of 2025 Heirs Insurance Essay Championship

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Leadway Assurance: Insurance Company of the Year at 2025 BAFI Awards

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Heirs Insurance Group Announces Inaugural Travel Festival: A Call for Inclusive Travel Ecosystem for Africans

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Global, African Lenders Decry Country Risk Challenges in Africa

Global and African financial heads identified country risk as the biggest challenge to their ability to lend more to African countries. Speaking in Abidjan during a one-day forum on investment risks in Africa hosted by the African Trade Insurance Agency (ATI), experts acknowledged that the abundance of current liquidity in the market did nothing to alleviate the capacity constraints faced by most banks when doing business in Africa.
Lenders are bound by regulations that prevent them from lending significant amounts to sub-investment grade sovereigns, which is the case for most African countries.  Institutions such as ATI that can offer investment insurance can help to mitigate the risks and thereby bring added lending and investment capacity to African markets. Without an increased ceiling in limits, international lenders will continue to be constrained on the amounts they are able to lend both at the sovereign and corporate levels.
Experts attending the forum also noted positive movements in countries such as Ghana and Senegal for instance, which were recently put on positive watch by the rating agency S&P. This was largely based on the dividends anticipated from key infrastructure developments and investor-friendly policies. In Senegal, for example, the country has restructured its commercial laws, implemented a Public Private Partnership law that ensures all signed public contracts in the oil and gas sector are published and created a department of competition tasked with working hand in hand with investors.
Risk analysis experts at the conference cited Botswana, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Zimbabwe as countries to watch in the coming months based on strong reserves in Botswana, political transitions in the case of Ethiopia and Zimbabwe, a strategy to transform its economy into a services hub in the case of Rwanda, and creating an enabling environment to attract investors in the case of Côte d’Ivoire.
Most government representatives at the meeting also noted their countries efforts to ramp up value addition in the agriculture sector along with an emphasis on removing barriers to trade within the continent. Jean-Louis Ekra, the former President of Afreximbank observed that Africa is in fact moving in a different direction than the current protectionist tendencies of Western countries. In contrast, Africa is uniting under the banner of the African Continental Free Trade Area, which will become the world’s largest trade area.
While participants agreed that the risk perception in Africa is typically greater than the on-the-ground reality, they also recognized that making Africa less risky would require a concerted focus aimed at improving the overall business environment in order to address the risks that do exist.  According to a recent Moody’s report, 40 to 50% of defaults in developing markets are directly linked to country risks. During the forum, panellists discussed low-cost solutions that could help countries reduce their risk including ensuring fair adherence to existing regulations.
“One of our roles at ATI is to educate governments to make them aware of the elements that international investors consider in their assessment of country risks. If countries are made aware that any drastic changes they make to legislation, for instance, could be a key political risk factor, they may make better choices and create more fertile environments for the private sector,” commented John Lentaigne, ATI’s Chief Underwriting Officer. He added that “a stable investment climate can be demonstrably and directly linked to growth.”
Despite Africa’s perceived risks, ECGC, India’s export credit agency and international broker, BPL Global, who have a combined USD142 billion worth of exposures, noted a relatively low claims and reasonable recovery experience in Africa. Out of BPL’s USD42 billion in current exposures which is insured with international investment risk providers 8 billion of this exposure is in Africa, where the company has historically recorded USD230 million in claims of which USD123 million has subsequently been recovered.
International lenders and insurers commented on the importance of ATI’s participation to make projects bankable through its preferred creditor status and relationships with African governments. This was seen as ATI’s core value proposition.
In his address to participants, Pierre Guislain the Vice-President responsible for Private Sector, Infrastructure and Industrialization of the African Development Bank noted the Bank’s commitment to transform the relationship with ATI into a strategic partnership that can leverage its reach and help countries accelerate regional integration.
ATI, a multilateral investment and trade credit insurer posted record results in 2017 for the sixth consecutive year with USD10 million in profits representing a 55% increase over 2016 and USD2.4 billion in gross exposures.

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Topics

Guinea Insurance: N1bn Premium, Digital Roadmap in 2020

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Non-Performing Loans: Are Banks Innocent Victims?

The 322 Bankers’ Committee Meeting ended recently in Abuja with a resounding resolution to publish the names of bank debtors on August 1, 2015 under the so-called ‘Name & Shame’ initiative. The objective of this measure we were told is to recover the estimated N400 billion listed as outstanding bad debt in the banking sector.Even before the resolution of the Bankers’ Committee, a number of angry banks had already published such list of debtors in selected national dailies. Unity Bank Plc is one of them.

The Buhari-Osinbajo 50% Salary Cut: Leading From The Frontline!

These are desperate times in Nigeria! Times that demand tough decisions in public interest and exemplary leadership on the part of leaders. It is tough not to acknowledge the difficult economic and security situation of the nation today.

Gartner Lists Top 10 Corporate Technology Trends for 2016

Gartner defines a strategic technology trend as one with the potential for significant impact on the organisation. "Gartner's top 10 strategic technology trends will shape digital business opportunities through 2020," said David Cearley, Vice President and Gartner Fellow. "The first three trends address merging the physical and virtual worlds and the emergence of the digital mesh. While organisations focus on digital business today, algorithmic business is emerging. Algorithms - relationships and interconnections - define the future of business. In algorithmic business, much happens in the background in which people are not directly involved.

IPEN Roundtable 2023: Participants to Get Free Insurance Cover

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Non-payment of Salaries: Matters Arising

At first, it was a rumour. Then, the rumor became stronger. And then, the rumour became political allegation that the federal and state governments could no longer pay salaries because public funds were deployed by the two major political parties to prosecute the 2015 general elections. Today, the situation has become a national embarrassment that Nigeria cannot pay its civil servants-from federal government to state governments. While actual figures of the total indebtedness at the federal and state levels is difficult to ascertain, various media reports quoted N110 billion as the total sum due to the unfortunate government employees.

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