By Angela Okpe

As the President of the Nigerian council of Registered Insurance Brokers, NCRIB, Mrs. Laide Osijo, gets set to bow out from office, she has said that her tenure as the president of the Council was successful.

Osijo, who highlighted some of her achievements at a farewell lunch for insurance Journalists held at the NCRIB Headquarters in Lagos last week said that she strived to give quality leadership and service to the Council within the limits of her capacity and grace.

Osijo who will be handing over the baton of leadership to the next president in a month’s time highlighted her achievement to include professionalism; inauguration of legal committee; empowerment of Area Committees; manpower development, government/ institutional relations; as well as intellectual development.

Others are Associateship certification; opening of business vistas for members; maiden investment platform for insurance brokers; secretariat building/staff development; as well as IFRS compliance.

Talking on professionalism, Osijo said “The worth of any professional lies in his or her continuous acquisition of knowledge as well as subjugation of such individual to established code of ethics and discipline.” She said that in the last two years, the council took significant strides to affirm ethical prescriptions, especially those espoused in the 2003, NCRIB Acts and the rules for members, adding that the intention is to restore the dignity and respect expected of insurance industry and in order to reduce the vexation incidence of quackery, and unethical conducts by Brokers.

On inauguration of legal committee, Osijo said “In view of the need to position the council to meet the various unfolding legal and regulatory challenges, the council inaugurated the legal committee with membership drawn from legal practitioners in the insurance broking confraternity while the council now has a legal department manned by seasoned lawyer who also acts as the secretary to the council.

On empowerment of Area Committee, she said the regime made it a point of duty to empower all Area Committees of the council for the collective interest of the council and members and also adopted the bottom up membership involvement approach whereby, members were made to enlist their membership from the Area Committee level.

On manpower development, Osijo said that they paid considerable attention to human capital development of staff and members during her regime, adding “It is to the credit of the administration that it initiated the idea of a yearly strategic retreat for management and middle cadre staff of the secretariat, board management and chairman of all Area Committees”. The retreat according to her had featured brains storming session leading to the conception of the mission and vision statement strategic objectives for the council. Osijo also recalled that the council facilitated and had collaborated with notable local and international consultancies and bodies for the knowledge enhancement of membership.

She said, “The council also organize training in oil and gas insurance in Dubai, UAE and most recently in Canada, as well as in partnership with Innovat Consultants organized oil and gas training for members in Lagos and Kaduna for the benefits of members in that zone, while the training had led to accelerated patronage of brokers in several multinational oil companies including NNPC.”

According to Osijo, going by the increasing need for effective networking in order to grow contemporary organization, the administration identifies the need for the NCRIB to maintain effective liaison with government and institutional bodies and notably, the administration had most robust relationship with the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) against the belief that the industry could achieve its desired growths.

She added “Aside projecting the insurance broking profession as ethical practitioners, it has also eliminated unethical practitioners from the profession. The NCRIB has made an impressionable presence in the West Africa Insurance Institute WAII and the West African Insurance Companies Association (WAICA). While the council has also become a recognised constituent of WAICA with a sub body christened West Africa Insurance Brokers Forum now chaired by Mr. Rotimi Edu.

“Being the first female president of the NCRIB and a governing board member of WAII, I have personally instituted a yearly monetary donation to the development of the collage and instituted a yearly award for graduating students of the collage of insurance,” Osijo said.