Universal Insurance Plc, says its capability to accept risks is hinged on the capacity it has built over the years through a robust and well-structured reinsurance programme.
The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Ben Ujoatuonu, who disclosed this at the annual general meeting of Nigerian Association of Insurance and Pension Editors (NAIPE) in Lagos, noted that the company has capacity to carry multidimensional risks.
Ujoatuonu explained that this trend was established “Since I came on board as Managing Director of Universal Insurance; we have been able to arrange very robust and well-structured reinsurance programme. I am a technical person and I understand the trajectory of the business. That has helped us to build capacity over the years”.
“We don’t play with our reinsurance. Our reinsurance broker once said to me, ‘in the international market, you are the only person that doesn’t waste time in paying his reinsurance premium. I don’t play with it, because you can take a risk today and go to bed and anything can happen the next day. So, we have a well arranged and structured reinsurance programme where we can easily fall back to, and over the years we have also built retention to enable us carry diverse risks from the insuring public.”
He noted that the company has been working round the clock to build strong units and departments that can deliver value to customers. And I must tell you that the efforts we put in over time, have started yielding results, and that is what we are seeing now. It did not just come out overnight. We have been working underground in the last six years in developing some areas of our units and that has yielded a whole lot of results.”
Ujoatuonu said the company’s transformation has come through sustained insurance awareness it has continued to project. In addition to this, he said the company is playing strong in the digital space with remarkable presence in the social media as well as physical presence in areas where it operates.
“In creating awareness, we also seek to support some ideas such as the Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria (CIIN) programme of reaching out to people such as the secondary schools reach-out programme. We participate in the CIIN programmes. And beyond that also, we get to talk to students in some schools.
The awareness programme also involves presence at NYSC orientation camps talking about insurance. This primarily to create awareness about insurance as a necessary tool for life and living.
