By Peter Egwuatu

The National Insurance Commission, NAICOM, has emphasized the need for the insurance industry to embrace technology to facilitate growth and archive the N1 trillion gross premium target it has set for end of 2023.

Sunday Thomas, Commissioner for Insurance and CEO, NAICOM, stated this last week in Lagos at the 2nd insurance conference hosted by United Capital Securities with the theme, “Technology as a critical driver of growth and transformation in the Nigeria Insurance landscape”.

He said NAICOM has come up with a 10 year strategic road map in order to move the insurance industry to a greater height.

His words: “To achieve growth in the industry, the players must adopt technology in their operations to be able to attract people to embrace their products. It is unfortunate we are about number 60 globally and 5th position in Africa. We have the potentials to be at the top and that is why we are making it open for more players to come into the industry with innovations and technology to boost the services to the people. We have chosen United Capital as our development partner in the industry.

“NAICOM has embraced technology and we don’t accept paper processing. You don’t need to come to our office for registration or rendering returns. We monitor all the players on what they sell on daily basis and if any insurance company says it didn’t sell any policy in a week we will know and will question why such company should be in the industry. So under my watch, technology is a must for the players to key in and drive the industry.”

In his remark, Peter Ashade, Group CEO, United Capital Plc, said: “Technology has helped us to grow into seven entities. We saw the potentials in insurance and that is why we enter into it as player. “There are huge benefits we can tap from the industry. Every of our services from stock broking, asset management, insurance, investment banking, digital bank, etc are all driven by technology”.