Insurance industry grows premium by N47b, elects new NIA chairman

The Gross Written Premium of insurance companies in Nigeria grew by N47.1 billion in 2017, according to the Nigeria Insurance Association.
The GPW is the value of total business undertaken by insurance companies during the period.
Eddie Efekoha, the outgoing Chairman of NIA, disclosed this at the association’s 2017 and 40th Annual General Meeting in Lagos.
He said that the GPW grew to N363 billion from N315.96 billion recorded in 2016.
Efekoha attributed this success to the Market Restructure and Development Initiative of National Insurance Commission.
He said NIA had also put introduced a monitoring team to ensure that the 58 insurance companies under its umbrella operated ethically and paid claims promptly to policy holders.
Efekoha said that the association’s Unstructured Supplementary Service Data initiative and new strategies would improve insurance uptake by the public.
He said that the industry was not isolated from the developments in the general economic space in Nigeria.
He said: “With epileptic power supply and dilapidated infrastructure such as roads and other public infrastructures, insurance companies had to contend with cost of operations.”
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the Managing Director of NEM Insurance, Tope Smart, was elected as the new Chairman of NIA at the meeting.
Smart is from Ijagba, Ekiti State. He was born on April 24, 1964.
The 2017 AGM brought the tenure of Efekoha, who took over the leadership mantle in 2015, to an end.