Nigeria contributes 32.8% of WAICA Re premium in 2018

Nigerian Insurance Industry in the 2018 financial year led other countries including Ghana, and Sierra Leone, contributing 32.8 percent of WAICA Re’s total premium.

While Nigeria generated $19.04 million into the pool, Ghana contributed 22.23 percent, equal to $12.89 million, while Sierra Leone generated $1.12 million

According to the chairman of WAICA Re, the company recorded a gross premium growth of 4 percent from $55.8 million in 2017 to $58.0 million in 2018.

He said this subdued growth resulted from the company’s decision to concentrate on profitable businesses and stop business dealings with some brokers who only add negatively to her debt ratio by not paying premiums.

“The growth was driven mainly by our Tunisia, Nigeria and Francophone markets, which grew by134 percent, 52 percent and 51 percent in that order.”

According to him, strong growth was also recorded in Sierra Leone 50 percent and Liberia 33 percent.

“There was however negative growth in our Ghanaian and our Diaspora markets recording -6 percent and -39 percent respectively.”

Its net profit after tax rose to $6.9million in 2018, representing a 28 percent increase from the 2017profit after tax of $5.5 million.

According to him, the gross premium remained largely driven by Fire, Engineering and Accident classes, which accounted for a combined 72 percent of premium income in 2018.

He however noted that there are continuous efforts to grow other business lines as evidenced by the growth recorded in Special Risk (89 percent) and Marine and Aviation (55 percent) from 2017 to 2018. This helped Special Risk to contribute 13 percent to the 2018 gross premium whilst Marine and Aviation improved to 8 percent.

The firm, investment income grew from $2.5 million in 2017 to $3.3 million in 2018 representing a 31 percent growth, largely driven by additional interest income from increased financial assets. Having significantly reduced our local currency risk exposures, foreign exchange losses fell from as high as $3.6 million in 2017 to $0.3 in 2018, a whopping 92 percent reduction.