Leadway Assurance Company Limited has launched its mobile office designed to create more awareness and deepen penetration of insurance services in the country.
Ms. Adetola Adegbayi, Executive Director, Leadway Assurance, said the mobile office initiative is important in order to get the insuring public to fully understand what insurance is all about. She said insurance is buying of risks from customers while the policy serves as evidence of the risk bought off the customer by an insurance firm.
Adegbayi maintained that the mobile office caravan will move into various neighbourhoods to spread the message of insurance and purchase risks from existing and potential customers.
“The protection gap in Nigeria is still very low because many people do not purchase insurance services for a variety of reasons. We hope to get more people into the protection net through the mobile office because public perception is important to us in the insurance market.”
The Leadway Assurance ED added that the mobile office caravan is to educate, make aware and ensure access to insurance services, as well as a research tool to determine where to open a new branch.
“The Leadway Assurance Mobile Office is about making insurance accessible to the people. It will reach people where they live and educate them on the need to have insurance protection. It is our contribution towards deepening insurance penetration in Nigeria.”
Adegbayi said further: “As market leaders in the Nigerian Insurance industry, we have taken it upon ourselves to fulfill the task of reducing the financial protection gap within the country, which in turn increases on the low insurance penetration rate in Nigeria. We have elected to bring risk protection and insurance education closer to the man on the street in Nigeria. The launch of this state-of-the-art Mobile Office is a testament to the execution of this goal. Our objective goes beyond sales; we intend to reverse the negative perception many Nigerians have of the insurance industry.
“With the huge potential of the insurance industry to positively impact our economy by safeguarding the enormous risks within the entire business ecosystem, and by creating wealth through investments, the industry is still way behind other financial and service sectors, contributing about 0.3% to the Nigerian Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
“Notwithstanding a population of over 180million people about a third of which are within the insurable class, Nigeria is said to have about 5 million registered policyholders. This lack of density shows how largely untapped the Nigerian market is and the huge opportunities available to increase insurance uptake and the number of policyholders nationwide.”
