Only 3% of Nigerians have insurance, according to the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM), and 97% do not because they are unsure of the benefits or have not been properly informed about them.
To put things in perspective, there are currently 200 million people living in Nigeria. Approximately 197 million people, or 97% of the population, do not have health insurance.
In a presentation titled “Insurance sector and the Nigerian Economy: Impact, Challenges and the new Frontiers” at the recent journalists’ conference in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, Dr. Usman Jankara, Assistant Director, Corporate Strategy and Special Duties, NAICOM, disclosed this information.
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He claims that just three million people are actually covered by insurance. “The number of those insured is put at three million,” he stated. Nigeria is estimated to have 200 million people as of last year, when the data was collected.
“From 2015 till date, when you look at gross premium income of the industry, we were at N282 billion in 2015, and today it is N736 billion, representing average growth of 15 per cent.”
Jankara also put forward that, “That is not to say the industry couldn’t have done better, but to point to the fact that things are not as bad as they were today. There has been no economy that has grown 15 per cent over a 10-year period. None of the sub-sectors have done that.
“As of 2015, assets grew from N917 billion to N2.32 trillion in 2022, an exceptional growth of about 60 per cent. Our insurance penetration rate, that is insurance to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is 0.4 per cent and the insurance density, that is, how many Nigerians are insured, is 1.5 per cent.”
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Life insurance, according to Jankara, will increase from N86 billion in 2015 to N309.1 billion in 2022.
“Also, non-life insurance grew from N198.3 billion in 2015 to N417.3 billion in 2022”, he added.
NAICOM’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Sunday Thomas, had earlier welcomed everyone to the occasion and mentioned that efforts were being made to improve insurance sensitization in order to achieve greater penetration.
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