Africa’s prospect of maintaining its its position as the second fastest growing insurance market after Latin America is hinged on earing the trust of the people and a firm grip to extricate the promoters of lack of trust across its markets.
The chief consultant B.A. Adedipe Associates Limited, Dr. Biodun Adedipe, said this at NAIPCO media parley the firm co-sponsored with Boff and Company Insurance Brokers Limited, where he presented “2021 Review and 2022 Economic Outlook” with optimism that the key highlight of $68bn gross written premium and 8th largest in the world provides assurance that the prospect of growth putting the continent behind Latin America as the fastest growing market gives room for insurance growth across regional markets.
He said as the continent stands at point of reckoning as a market to watch and the challenges that could cause an upset this needed treatment, he cited fraud, poor training of professionals, delays in claims payment and limited understanding of insurance by policyholders. Adjunct to these he mentioned, are poor literacy, prevalent low income and and alternatives to insurance, for instance, time tested community based schemes.
Despite these strings of challenges, South Africa is the ace insurance market in the continent and along with Kenya, Egypt, Nigeria Algeria, Namibia and Tunisia are the industry leaders in Africa with combined market share of 85%.
Adedipe said that South Africa market Africa’s insurance market leader, is driven by the life business which accounts for 85% of insurance premium volume.
Stating Nigeria statistics, he said gross premium income grew by 15% year-on-year to N592.3bn in 2020. Another area of Nigeria’s insurance operation the renowned economist stated, is the insurance sector growth trend from 2011-Q3’2021 which has been sliding with a few points upswing; same applied to the sector’s contribution to GDP, 2016 – Q3’2021. With a registered GDP of 0.49% in 2016 it experienced ups and downs up and until 2021 Q3 with 0.30%. Its highest contribution was .061% in Q2′ 2016 and the lowest 0.26% in Q4′ 2020.
