Electronic payment experts gather next month for the financialtechnology eNNovators (FTeB) breakfast to examine how the insurance industry can benefit from the booming mobile phone market in Nigeria.

The quarterly event is organised by financial-technology magazine and designed for Dreamers-Drivers and Doers (3Ds) of techno-logy business in finan-cial services industry across Africa.

According to editor-in-chief of financial-technology magazine, Mr. Sola Fanawopo, FTeB offers opportunity for networking and strategic planning.

Every quarter, leading industry thought leaders and opinion molders meet in an intimate and relaxed environment to disseminate cogent information on topical issues, create new relationships and pro-mote their businesses.

The first edition of the event held on March 29 focused on harmonising SIM registration and mobile payment KYC for secure mobile payment service in Nigeria.

Representative of director of Banking and Payments System, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr. Abayomi Atoloye, and the D.G., National Identity Management Commi-ssion (NIMC), Dr. Chris Onyemenam, delivered position papers.

Fanawopo informed that the second edition with the theme “What do 95 million active mobile telephone lines mean for insurers in Nigeria?” would hold in Lagos.

Speaking on the theme for the second edition, he said that mobile telephone has dramatically changed the way Nigerians conduct businesses.

“Businesses are investing in innovations to keep up to date with changing trends in consumer behaviours.

“Insurance industry cannot afford to lag behind. The impact of mobility on insurance operations is huge such that insurers will have to adapt to the increasingly prevalent use of mobile devices”, he added.

He said insurance companies in Nigeria should invest in mobile channels in order to service their customer base and mobile technology presents the insurance industry with an opportunity to meet two familiar and linked challenges: “how to adopt new technology and market to huge based of young customers”.

Handset owners cons-titute an extensive technology infrastruc-ture that many insurers are not pursuing aggressively enough.

technologies.

For example, he offered, insurers should choose whether to focus on optimizing their existing websites for use on mobile devices or to develop applications for specific mobile operating systems, such as

the iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7.

He said that the event would address all the issues around the impact of mobility in insurance services. The event would be case study-led, which include the over 95 million mobile phones in Nigeria, mobile

insurance services in South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Ghana, and the available options for Mobile insurance services inAfrica.

The event would also examine the roles of MNOs, insurers, banks, switching firms and mobile money operators’ provision of mobileinsurance services, and how to make Nigerians to buy life insurance

policies and the place of regulations in the use of mobile devices to provide insurance services.