Nigeria’s Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has advocated improved education for insurance policy makers in order to achieve deeper insurance penetration in the country.
Okonjo-Iweala, who gave the advice today at the sidelines of the 53rd Annual Meeting of the African Development Bank (AfDB), in Busan, South Korea, noted that the low level of insurance penetration in Africa at three per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and about 0.3 per cent of GDP in Nigeria was not desirable for the economies.
She clarified: “As the world is experiencing so much uncertainties and a lot of volatility in the economy, people really need to think more deeply about insurance and how they can help protect themselves and their families, even their countries against these risks.
“We really need to move forward; there is a lot of opportunities, so we need massive education and insurance companies must take some responsibilities by working with government in this direction.
“We should set ourselves some targets; we were begining to do that earlier on when we were in government; to see if we could really, by 2020, 2025, 2030, set targets of having insurance penetrate deeply”, Okonjo-Iweala added.
Okonjo-Iweala, who is the Chairperson of the Board of African Risk Capacity (ARC) initiative, commended Nigeria for signing the ARC Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) which is a form of weather-based insurance.
