Economy
SOME insurance and tech experts on Thursday called for a roadmap and more collaboration by stakeholders in the finance sector to accelerate technology adoption in the insurance industry.
They experts spoke at the maiden edition of the Insurance Meet Tech Conference, organised by Modion Communications in Lagos.
The Managing Director of Interswitch Systegra, Mr Jonah Adams, described the insurance industry as a fragmented market that was not operating at scale.
He said the industry, which needed about N6.5 billion investment through technology, was ripe for intervention to operate at scale, but there was no internal and external collaboration between its stakeholders.
“Regulators, private sector investors or interested persons must deliberately make an effort to build a core infrastructure that allows everyone to collaborate in Nigeria,” he said.
Mr Sola Ajayi, Executive Head of Sales, Leadway Assurance Ltd., said the insurance industry was keen on expansion and technological advancement.
Ajayi noted that though the industry had been static, if not shrinking in the last two years, it would experience lots of unbundling of insurance products through the use of technology.
Mr Samuel Ogbu, Group Chief Executive Officer, Old MutualWest Africa said, for underwriters to deliver more value, technology was needed, as the sector must evolve and revolutionalise to create more viable products and solutions to problems.
Ogbu noted that the problem in the Nigeria insurance industry was not peculiar, and a lot had been done to address them; but with lot more collaboration from the players, there would be speedy market delivery.
Mr Wole Odeleye, Client Technology Lead, Microsoft, advocated collaboration by all financial service providers, consolidated service, value proposition for customers to understand not just financial inclusion but how it affected them.
In the same vein, Chief Executive Officer, PaddyCover, Mr Mayowa Owolabi, said technology made it easier to collect, distribute and sell insurance products.
Owolabi explained that since insurance was competing against the share of the wallet and mind through economic, culture and religious beliefs, it should be embedded in other products to bring more people on board and deepen penetration.
He urged insurance regulators to set and update most of the outdated regulations with clarity of purpose and be coherent when doing so.
“There is a lot of barriers from the government when regulating the industry and this stiffles growth and development,” the CEO said.
In his welcome address, Convener IMT, Mr Modion Akobua, said the conference was a kick-off point for continental discourse among renowned minds in the insurance industry to disrupt its underdevelopment.
Akobua said it was time to ride on the dynamism of technology while showcasing the vogue in tech solutions.
“As of 2018, the Nigerian insurance industry was ranked 62nd in the world and despite the enormous economic possibilities that the industry portends in an optimised capacity.
“The county presently grapples with moving from the needle over an unimpressed 0.5 per cent penetration rate as of March,” he said.
According to him, IMT attempts to break the long-standing spell of sectoral immobility riding on the waves of new and applicable technology.
Akobua appreciated sponsors of the events such as Ecobank Microsoft Nigeria, MTN, ayo Holding ,Old Mutual, among other leading ICT and financial brands for their contributions. (NAN)
KN
Tags: Insurance Meet Tech Conference Interswitch Systegra Jonah Adams Leadway Assurance Ltd. Samuel Ogbu Sola Ajayi Wole Odeleye
