Cornerstone Insurance plc is hopeful of a giant leap into the top four league in the insurance industry on the back of a robust balance sheet, appreciable shareholders funds, and enhanced operating processes that would enable it to deliver on those goals.
The company built its gross premium by more than 30 percent and made a total compressible income of almost N3bn in 2020, its Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Ganiyu Musa, GMD/CEO said.
The company’s top line was reported at almost 20bn, and was coming on the back of a stellar performance in 2019. Preliminary numbers indicate a good trajectory with impressive Q1 2021, yet to be approved by the regulators.
“For us at cornerstone, we have never felt as excited as we do feel now which is counter intuitive because the whole world is going through a rough time, but we are in a unique position where interestingly a number of decisions and investments we made in the past almost appear to be inspired in the sense that we are now really realizing the value.
“Our growth is backed by significant increase in our liquidity as well as the quality of our assets which gave us the boldness to commit to settling all our claims,” Musa said in an interview on the sidelines of the Annual General Meeting/Election of the Nigeria Council of Registered Insurance Brokers, sponsored by Cornerstone Insurance in Abuja.
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He said Cornerstone sponsored the Meeting because of the critical role which Insurance Brokers play in the industry particularly between the insurers and insured.
Asked how the company was able to post impressive results in a pandemic year, he said the proactive investment in technology drove efficiency and helped them deliver better.
He said when the pandemic broke, the management worked with the board to create several scenarios of likely impact of the pandemic and how they would respond.
“Infact the actual was even much better than our most optimistic scenarios,” he said.
“During the lockdown, we never missed anything, all our board meetings held virtually as scheduled. But before then, we had migrated our business processes technologically which meant our staff could work remotely from anywhere and we could monitor how busy people were even without being in the office.
“The lockdown also helped us cut down costs and have more resources for deployment. Our marine insurance is probably the most robust and equally helped. Our management expenses remain almost at the same level as 2019. The health and strength of our balance sheet, our investment yield was also strong, and contributed to the positive results we see,” Musa stressed.
He further attributed the company’s successes to positive underwriting results in their risk management as well as a commitment to deliver to customers by ensuring that claims are adequately paid.
“You May accuse us of anything, of being inflexible or not paying bribes and so on, but in terms of the core tenets in insurance, our word is our bond,” the CEO assured.
“Again, we are fortunate to belong to a group where our principal shareholders, Capital Alliance has over $1bn in assets under management.
“So capital is not an issue. The way we see capital is that it would be adequate and not excessive. Total claims we paid for 2020 was over N4bn. We have moved our capital up to that N9b and then we have shareholders funds of about N13bn which again speaks to what I said about managing your capital such that it is adequate but not excessive.
“Most importantly we had a lot of marketers who stepped out there aggressively. That brought a good yield and we have looked at our first quarter 2021, which is impressive and on a good trajectory.
He confirmed that during the pandemic year, Cornerstone Insurance did see a surge in uptake for life insurance cover, as people suddenly saw the value in taking life policies especially for frontline workers.
“At the same time we did see an increase in the claims, not so much from the pandemic, but from the endsars protest.
“At the end of 2021, we are going to see a solid cornerstone so robust in the industry. I assure you that at the end of 2021, we will be within the first four insurance companies in the country,” Chidiebere Nwokeocha, Executive Director, Business Development added.
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