By ROSEMARY ONUOHA

As insurance professionals’ age and exit the profession, the young ones going in have not been able to match the number of those exiting on yearly basis. Director General of the Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria, Mr. Adepegba Adegboyega, in this interview decried this negative development, saying that there is need to fast-track efforts to be able to match the number of people coming in two times over and above those going out.

What is your assessment of the state of insurance education in Nigeria?

I have been involved in insurance education for upwards of 20 years. My own assessment of the state of insurance education in Nigeria is that there are still a lot more to be done by the industry itself, there are still a lot more to be done by the institute where I happened to be the Director General.

I will start by saying that the Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria (CIIN), which is the body that has been given the statutory powers to train and retrain insurance professionals and persons in Nigeria, is doing its best to ensure that those who will hold themselves out as insurance professionals are well trained before they are certified.

That is, for you to become an insurance professional, you must have gone through some prescribed examinations, which the institute conducts. The examination is in three parts, we have the certificate the diploma and advanced diploma stage.

If any one hopes to hold himself high as a professional, he must go through these examinations. The CIIN provides different services to enable us prepare students for examination. We also have a college that has been put in place to ensure that we train those who would take the examinations and those that will come in for refresher courses.

The institute has also some examination programmes that it conducts on regular basis; some on annual basis and regular intervals. Such programmes for example include the conferences, seminars, in-house programmes and Mandatory Continuing Professional Development (MCPD) training.

In all that I have said concerning the efforts of the CIIN, I think the insurance education in the country is not doing badly. I can say members of the industry are getting the best on training. We have also encouraged that education is not something you get from a particular source like the CIIN; we also encourage students and our members to develop and re-develop themselves.

The MDCP for example ensures that students for training programmes, write, carry out research, and attend programmes that can broaden their knowledge about the practice of insurance. I can say that the insurance education in Nigeria is gathering momentum.

What are the challenges confronting the institute?

There are a lot of challenges; of course, finance is the major issue, whether for the institute or the corporate bodies that would send their staff for programmes. Over the years, the budget for training has been dwindling. I do not have the figures, but there has been some scaling down of budget for training.

This is a major challenge. This is because, no matter how good and elaborate a training programme is, if we do not have too many of our members attending there is a challenge. We also have the challenge of change. There are always some feelings towards change.

But the truth is that, it is no longer fashionable or adequate for a practitioner to just have one certificate in the present dispensation without adding any other training like computer, management, or accounting.  Professions have become so intertwined that somebody must have a bit of what is obtainable in other professions.

An insurance professional therefore must never rest on his or her oars because the knowledge that was impacted some 10 years ago may not really be sufficient to drive the business of today.  So that is a challenge for professionals in learning more and asking more questions, carrying out research, as well as looking for more information.

There is also the challenge on raising qualified people who can impact knowledge on young practitioners. Our professionals are very busy people, but the time has come for them to give back something to those that are coming up. The challenge here is that the professionals have their primary duties and must meet certain targets in their officers.

We have been trying to encourage the professionals, but it has not been easy. We try to encourage people to have mentors and build relationships, but we still have some challenges. We hope that the so many good hands we have in industry who are not getting younger, will take up the challenge of impacting their knowledge on others.

How has the institute fared in encouraging intake of fresh hands to replace aging practitioners?

People have continued to age, because you can’t stop that. Most professionals have continued to age and we have continued to educate young people to take our examination to boost their performance. We have improved on our awareness drive and there are more people coming in to register for our examination, but there is still the need to fast track it.

I believe we must be able to match the number of people coming in two times over and above those going out. However, we have not been able to achieve that. There is a danger if we have for an example 30 people retiring every year and we cannot find about 40 or 50 people replacing them by way of qualification.

Exit can be as a result of death, retirement, loss of jobs and other factors, whereas, the only entrance into the profession is the CIIN which monitors those who come into the industry. When we did the last count, we observed that we have average of 60 people joining the profession every year.

I do not want to go into the number of people that leave the industry for I do not have the figure, but we know that people are leaving due to age and other reasons. I believe there has been some improvement in the number of people coming in; for we are working seriously to get more people into the profession through National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) orientation campaigns, visit to tertiary institutions, Catch Them Young Programmes, our Operation 5000 Graduate Scheme and so many other programmes.

What is the institute doing about encouraging professionals to write insurance textbooks for secondary schools?

We have a pool of authors who would be writing the books. We need people who are qualified and have flare for writing and hope to work with educationists who would review the books. It is not going to be strenuous as the book, ‘Insurance in Africa’ as Professor Joe Irukwu or Ezekiel Chiejina would write.

All we need is the basic professional qualification in insurance, then the flair for writing. And we will not just leave the author but will subject whatever he may have written to evaluation by insurance experts. We are going to tie the writing of the books to things like MCPD points. Those who do a paper or books for the institute would be given MCPD credit points that would enable them advance their carrier prospects.