By Patience Saghana
Preparations are in top gear for insurance professionals to storm India to attend the Chief Executives exchange programme for the year 2010, to allign with global  trends in the business and practice of insurance.

The programme being put together by Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria (CIIN) in collaboration with India Insurance Institute, in tandem with CIIN’s resolve to continually expose professionals to exchange programme.

The India trip, according to the insurance training institute is expected to expose the CEOs and practitioners the peculiar Indian insurance market as well as other tourism attractions.
The programme will run  for 9 days with an itinerary that covers the major landmark destinations in India, such as Mumbai, Pune, New Delhi and Agra.
Mr. Adegboyega Adepegba, CIIN Director-General, said it would be a worthwhile experience for participants who are coming from insurance and reinsurance companies, broking and loss adjusting firms in Nigeria.

Adepegba assured that the Indian insurance market has a lot to offer in terms of its unique position in the Asian economy in terms of experience, market share etc Some of the topics to be tackled during the exchange programee include micro-insurance agricultural insurance .

The DG explained that micro-insurance’s relative success in developing countries such as India , Bolivia , Bangladesh and Uganda command significant attention for countries where replication of the model will serve similar market needs and expectations.

However, he observed that the challenges facing the development of this class of insurance include poorly defined framework for a thriving micro-insurance business and the absence of supporting regulatory provisions.

Insurance scholars such as the body of Fellows of the CIIN as well as insurance researchers in the various tertiary institutions offering insurance courses in Nigeria, are addressing these challenges and will hopefully come up with objective recommendations on the ways and means of making the insurance sector in the country, a beneficiary of the prospects held out by this emerging market.

Agricultural Insurance as well as Health and Medical Insurance, he noted, are well developed in India and also have immense prospects for the Nigerian economy.

He said that the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) is committed to increasing insurance penetration from around 6 percent at present to 30 percent by year 2012 and grow the premium volume from N179 billion to N1 trillion while hopefully raising the Industry’s contribution to the GDP from 0.7 percent to 3 percent.

NAICOM’s set of regulatory mandates as well as CIIN’s human capital development agenda point in the right and desired direction, in the process of reaching these canvassed new heights.