Underwriting firm, Mutual Benefits Assurance plc, is targeting more retail customers in its franchise programme, which is further expanding its distribution network across the Nigerian mass market.
The company says it is aligning with the National Insurance Commission’s (NAICOM) efforts to deepen insurance penetration in Nigeria, by closing the gap and taking insurance to the grassroots where it is mostly needed.
Akin Ogunbiyi, group managing director, Mutual Benefits Assurance plc, says this is the only way to go if insurance must deliver value to individuals, businesses, entrepreneurship, industrial activities, and the national economy.
Speaking at the grand opening of Mutual Benefits Assurance franchise office at Ogudu, Lagos, Ogunbiyi says the insurance industry cannot afford to concentrate and place emphasis on the cooperate insurance, which revenue is dwindling with a lot of pressure on formal sector.
The group managing director says mutual benefits assurance has come out with an initiative called mutual regards, which means retail insurance as an agent of growth for mutual benefits in order to take insurance to the grassroots.
“We have opened 80 new offices, not in the cities but in rural location, and come up with over 72 new products met for the rural population so as to take insurance to the grassroots and keep preaching insurance to the rural people,” Ogunbiyi says.
Explaining the approach adopted, he says Mutual Benefits went to the rural people purely on partnership and empowerment basis, saying “we work with them to find out their needs, study them, create a profile for them and bring them into a group of 20, 50, and when we do that we were able to empower them, add value to their businesses and from there if they increase their turnover, then they will be able to afford the insurance products designed for them.”
He says further that the franchise office is the very first of its kind in the insurance industry in Nigeria, as they have the will to make the necessary investment to deepen insurance and close the insurance gap by taking the insurance to the grassroots, saying that he believes other insurance firms will also follow suit to make insurance what it is supposed to be in our country.
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