BD speaks with Oyeneyin, CEO AutoGenius

 

Q: How has the ‘No premium, no cover’ policy affected the Nigerian insurance sector, how has it generally improved everything about it?

It is one of the best things that has happened in the industry in terms of ensuring that people abide by rules and regulations and clamping down on people who take advantage of what we used to have before. People would get cover notes and repeatedly use it all through the year without actually paying the premium so that really would cut down on that now especially in the auto insurance industry. I think that it is a very good initiative. I think that as far as the industry is concerned in terms of revenue creation it would increase that.

I think that it would also get people to invest in insurance. I believe insurance is an investment that people need to make. You can’t see it, it’s not tangible but it is something that people need to get into their consciousness and the no premium no cover policy would literally begin to drive Nigerians towards that angle of embracing investment in insurance.

Q: What challenges do you still see and what measures do you believe can curb those challenges

We just did a survey about two months ago and it was across Nigerians from different demography who you call the bottom of the pyramid, the middle class and the more comfortable ones as it were and the outcome of that is that there is a huge lack of trust in the insurance industry so that is one of the major challenges that we need to overcome. I think that if we are going to begin to go into the space of life insurance cover, health insurance cover, auto and general insurance.

I think the insurance industry, we as the players and the regulators, the institutions need to come together and collaboratively inject a degree of trust letting people know that you can make claims, you would be paid if anything happen. Some of those things that have really given the industry a bad image in the past, we need to overcome that. I think that another challenge is penetration. Getting insurance policies or cover to the last man is a major problem in Nigeria because of how disconnected people are. But the advent of technology provides a huge opportunity to get over a hundred and two million mobile subscribers in Nigeria. That’s at any given point in time.