Cornerstone Insurance Plc says its pushing retail products into the Alaba International Market with the aim of supporting the traders in their business, protect their assets from fire and burglary, settlement of apprentice, as well as attract new investments into the estimated $5 billion market.
Stephen Alangbo, managing director/CEO of Cornerstone Insurance Plc speaking at the official opening of the branch at Alaba Insternational Market said this is part of the Company’s strategies to drive retail business and deepen insurance penetration in the country.
“The opening of Alaba International Market, recent one at Lekki and other branches we are planning to open is one of our strategies in Cornerstone Insurance Plc to drive detail business and deepen insurance penetration in Nigeria.
“We are coming to Alaba because there is a need for businessmen and women in the market to take insurance. You will see that we don’t have any significant presence of insurance in Alaba and we thought that if you want to distribute insurance and make people embrace it, you have to give them the product they want and come closer to them.
“Sometimes people buy a car and when there is an accident, they lose their investments. People who are in marketplaces, when there is fire incidence, they become poor automatically. In some families, when something happens to the breadwinner, the entire family is affected. We don’t need all these.”
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“We have one of our products “Oga Boy” if you pick somebody from the village to be your apprentice, and if he stays three or five years with you, and by the time he is going, and because you don’t have money to settle that person, it becomes a problem between you and that person and even the family of the person will not be happy with you.
“Oga Boy allows you to plan for your apprentice from the first day he starts serving you. So when the person has completed the period of his service, Cornerstone pays the person off on your behalf.
“Apart from developing products, we are coming close to our people and we are helping our people to imbibe the culture of insurance. This makes our business sustainable because we have made the mode of premium payment for the product easier for them – some can pay monthly, some may pay weekly, and it grows our income and also creates employment for the people living within the market communities and environs,” he said.
Alangbo said the Company is targeting seven to nine branches in the next year, adding that “this year we plan to open six branches. We started with Lekki and today Alaba. We will go to the East; we will go to the core north to have a wider distribution. We are going to have a Model Regional Office in Abuja, to make sure that we have a significant network for the distribution of our products and services in that part of the country.
He said, “We are also going to leverage cluster marketing which we call partnership in distributing our products and services in Alaba International Market. It helps us to reach many uninsured individuals easily. We have already related our intentions to the Chairman of the market and we have explained the benefits of insurance to them. One of the things that has worked for us is the pricing of our products. We have a product that is as cheap as N1,000 and when we are dealing with various associations in the market, it gives us access to many customers and also helps them to maximise the benefits of the various products we are bringing to them.”
Also speaking at the event, the Charles Nwachukwu, general manager, Business Development, said as of 2023, Alaba International Market generated revenue of about $5 billion.
“A market that generates such a huge amount of revenue, of course, needs insurance to protect stocks, protect human capital, improve investment, because insurance is a risk mitigating mechanism,” he said.
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