80% of Our Targets Were Met - Ex-NIA Boss
By Nnamdi Duru
The outgoing leadership of the Nigerian Insurers' Association (NIA) has expressed delight that over 80 percent of the targets it set for itself were met.
The outgoing chairman of the association, Mr. Godwin Alegieuno, in a recent interview with THISDAY in Lagos said the association recorded huge success in the areas of discipline, economic rating of insurance services and improving on the welfare of its employees while establishing a specialist insurance company to write aviation, marine and oil and gas businesses.
The outgoing Chairman disclosed that the association under his leadership achieved over 80 percent of its targets within the last two years.
"When you come in, you look at what you have already started together with your predecessor, you add some new things to it and as you progress, you achieve some, some of them will still be pending by the time you were leaving office. But I would say essentially that most of the issues that were outstanding when I took over and the new ones that I brought in, up to 80 percent or more of these were completed", he said.
The outgoing Chairman who is also the Managing Director of Lion of Africa Insurance Company Limited stated the major areas where he believes that his leadership recorded successes.
"During my period, we were able to concretise and cement on the issue of discipline within the membership of the association which has commenced even before my tenure. We were able to make it much more serious by setting up an inspectorate unit that has the power to visit offices and check the books of companies to ensure that they comply with the ethics of the association.
"The major area that we concentrated on was the area of rate-cutting which needed to be stemmed if the industry is not to go down the drain. We were able to successfully deal with that problem. It is still ongoing and we are following through to ensure that people don't slide back to old habits. So discipline and this rate-cutting issue was a major thing we were able to achieve", he said.
Another areas where success was recorded according to him was the insurers' operations in the banking sector saying, "we were able to review the banking industry in terms of fidelity guarantee and money-in-transit business which has become a very high risk business and even the banks are not paying adequate premium for the services we are rendering to them".
He added that the association has started to address the contentions of banks on this issue just as the association has reached the final stage of setting up a specialist insurance company which will underwrite those risks where individual companies do not possess the capacity to underwrite. Association's employee welfare according to him was another areas that his leadership addressed.
"We started the process of establishing a specialist company to deal with local risks in oil and gas business, marine hull, aviation, etc. for which as at now we don't have enough capacity. We felt that if insurance companies could set up a specialist company with adequate capitalisation to deal with that area, it will improve our combined fortunes, we have gone very far on that.
"The general well-being of the secretariat staff, we attempted to improve the administrative set-up and things like that", Alegiuno said.
The Lion of Africa Insurance Company boss argued that NIA leadership is not akin to that of corporate organisations where goals could be set for a given period and achievments assessed based on that. He added that the leadership of the association is a "continuum" involving moving targets as one Chairman leaves for his Vice-chairman to take over the leadership.
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