The Nigerian insurance industry contributes less than 1 percent to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country’s economy, as stated by the Senior Manager, Brand, Media and Communications at African Alliance Insurance, Bankole Banjo.
He said this at the first edition of the BizWatch Nigeria webinar series themed, ‘Building Financial Resilience with Insurance Solutions Amid COVID-19’.
His words fall in line with the remark of the Chief Executive Officer of VerifyMe Nigeria, Esigie Aguele, who noted the potential of the insurance sector in Nigeria at a webinar earlier this year.
Aguele compared the contributions of the Nigerian insurance sector to the GDP to that of the South African insurance sector’s contribution to the South African GDP.
He said that the Nigerian insurance sector contributed only $1 billion to Nigeria’s GDP in 2020, while the South African insurance sector contributed $50 billion.
He went further to urge stakeholders to “put in efforts to ensure that insurance is available to more people to grow the digital economy.”
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Pointing out a factor that hindered the insurance sector in Nigeria, Banjo said that visibility remained less of an issue but what continued to limit the growth of the sector was “communication”.
He said, “The problem of insurance in Nigeria is not visibility. Our problem has always been communication. We seem to be using the language above the head of the average person.”
He added that “Insurance is a business of trust, a business of promise.”
