Insurance is making its place the point of focus, in a renewed surge that was scripted by its deft involvement in the intervention pool for front line Covid-19 health workers.
The bold move fits its renown as the midwife of commerce, a strategic financial industry that exists for businesses and individuals to explore and, provide financial uninterrupted services for them to excel and remain in business.
In developed clime, no one takes a stand without insurance cover. It acts as the quarter back defending the home front of policyholders and offering peace of mind to all in its domain.
The bold move has raised its rating which up until now has remained mild in rating despite close to a century of organised provision of insurance services. First operated wholly from Nigeria by the Royal Exchange as an independent office of the headquarters in London.
Having lost much recognition ground to the banks and pension, the industry created its own elevation point from where to respond to the pool of Covid-19 responders and receive national attention, the response was instant- all round tick for the insurance industry.
First, they received the Presidential award of commendation. The strategic move was the N11b insurance cover for frontline health workers fighting Covid-19, an insurance industry addition to the pool of efforts coming from other sectors and individuals.
It was a novel response to a novel virus, which incidentally has 100 years circle. The health workers- doctors, nurses, pharmacists, volunteers, drivers, as well as cooks, cleaners, gatemen etc, were already covered by group life policies and other related and mandatory cover at federal and state levels.
What made the insurance industry intervention unique was that it was a spike with national visibility and the spiral will remain for a long time to come.
The Commissioner for Insurance, Mr Sunday Thomas, succinctly explains the leverage the operators served the high rated health workers. “The N11b benefit was paid for by the insurance industry as part of their support to motivate the health workers and fight against Covid-19. The 5000 people covered are from all the states of the federation. The industry has assumed the liabilities on their own and we are looking at a worse scenario. Nobody prays for a total fatality but where this kind of policy is in place, we have the assurance that when it gets bad the industry will always be there for us.”
He opens the vent of its history, “We came together and we looked at the frontline health workers and we provided some benefits which is a top up to the one already provided under the Pension Reform A(PRA) 2014. It is assumed that majority of those that would be working will first of all have the baseline group life cover.
Nigerian Insurers Association DG Mrs Yetunde Ilori, said the premium secured was N112.5m paid by the operators to secure life insurance policy document “COVID 19 Intervention team life insurance cover”.
“The policy covers Covid-19 centres under the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) across the country and other accredited centres by the NCDC. Anybody we are paying has to come under NCDC because our support is for the federal government,” she said.
This act of the industry has opened also, a novel page for the operators and, from the secured position courtesy of the novel virus the industry has secured the lift to reach the top and view the surrounding and further horizon that insurance could reach.
