Stories by Favour Nnabugwu

EXPERTS have called on African insurers to pursue financial inclusion with the aim of making insurance services accessible and affordable.

Chairman, Planning Committee of the National Insurance Conference, NIC, Alhaji Femi Hassan, said that financial inclusion should be the pursuit of the sector in making insurance services accessible and affordable to all individuals and businesses irrespective of net worth and size. At a media parley in Lagos, Hassan said that financial inclusion strives to address and proffer solutions to the constraints that exclude people from participating in the financial sector.

He stated: “To the insurance industry, financial inclusion should be the pursuit of making insurance services accessible at affordable costs to all individuals and businesses irrespective of net worth and size. Financial inclusion strives to address and proffer solutions to the constraints that exclude people from participating in the financial sector.

“The financial sector in general is continuously coming up with new and seamless ways to provide services to the global population. While these innovative services have disrupted the financial world by including more participants in the money sector, there is still an untapped portion of the world population that remains unbanked or under-banked, uninsured or underinsured.”

Speaking on the role insurance plays in guaranteeing food security, Director-General, African Risk Capacity ARC, Mr. Mohamed Beavogui, said African Risk Capacity has pooled $54 million from its limited resources to head African innovation in the journey towards making Africa’s agriculture and vulnerable people resilient to climate disasters risks, focusing initially on drought model.

He noted that African governments are working to expand solutions, beneficiaries, impacts and stakeholders. “At the end of 2017, ARC has served 2.1 million people, and 900,000 livestock in four African countries when their harvests failed and paid out over $36 million thereby demonstrating the proof of its concept” he said.