Chief Operating Officer of Sovereign Trust Insurance Plc, STI, Mr. Sammy Ogbodu has said that the company will soon introduce its takaful insurance and micro-insurance products into the market.

Ogbodu also said that the company is currently doing all the necessary ground work to ensure a smooth launching of the new line of business.

Stating this recently, Ogbodu said his organisation would want to deepen insurance penetration and increase its market share by ensuring that insurance is taken to the down trodden in all the nooks and crannies of the country.

According to him, representatives of the company at the just concluded Africa Insurance Organisation, AIO, conference learnt so much about micro-insurance and takaful insurance and have returned to make the necessary presentations to the management of the company.

“By the time we present our report and from what we learnt during the conference which we are discussing among ourselves; it is clear that the way we are looking at it is different from what we have learnt.  For example in takaful, we are supposed to separate it from normal insurance business.

“If you look at the Sudanese market experience, they even have separate boards for takaful insurance and if you look at Africa-Re, they also have a separate board for it different from the normal board. So those are the things we really have to strategise on,” Ogbodu said.

He also assured stakeholders in the company that the non-life insurer would soon launch its brand of takaful insurance and micro-insurance products into the market.

“Give us like three months because we have to do a detail research, because product fail because people don’t do detailed research. In our own case, we will try as much as possible to do very detail research into any product we are launching,” he said.

“If you look at our flagship micro insurance product that sell for N1,500, its really selling because we took time to really develop it and we are enjoying the fruit of our labour so to say,” Ogbodu confessed.

Established 16 years ago, STI listed its shares on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange in 2006.