97% of Nigerians not insured, says NAICOM
The National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) has revealed that only three per cent of Nigerians have insurance and 97 per cent of the current population of Nigeria which is estimated to be 200 million do not have as they are undecided or not properly sensitised on the gains therein.
NAICOM’s Assistant Director, Corporate Strategy and Special Duties, Dr. Usman Jankara, made this known in a speech he delivered at the recently held journalists’ seminar in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, titled: “Insurance sector and the Nigerian Economy: Impact, Challenges and the new Frontiers”.
According to him, the number of those insured is a paltry three million.
“From 2015 till date, when you look at gross premium income of the industry, we were at N282 billion in 2015, and today it is N736 billion, representing average growth of 15 per cent, he stated’’.
Jankara also put forward that, “That is not to say the industry couldn’t have done better, but to point to the fact that things are not as bad as they were today. The National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) noted that there has been no economy that has grown 15 per cent over a 10-year period. None of the sub-sectors have done that”.
“As of 2015, assets grew from N917 billion to N2.32 trillion in 2022, an exceptional growth of about 60 per cent. Our insurance penetration rate, that is insurance to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is 0.4 per cent and the insurance density, that is, how many Nigerians are insured, is 1.5 per cent.”
Jankara maintained that life insurance grew from N86 billion in 2015 to N309.1 billion in 2022.
“Also, non-life insurance grew from N198.3 billion in 2015 to N417.3 billion in 2022”, he added.
Earlier in his welcome remarks at the event, NAICOM’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr Sunday Thomas, said efforts on to deepen insurance sensitisation to achieve wider penetration.
MTO/SUN
