The National Insurance Commission NAICOM, says is engaging all its systems to land the insurance industry a new era where its task will transit from rules reform to reshape confidence, rebuild credibility, and reposition insurance a strategic pillar of national development. It has a promise to accommodate specialist players,, publish a phased riskbased capital and governance roadmap with proportionality for smaller and specialist players.
The Commissioner for Insurance, Olusegun Ayo Omosehin, made this clear yesterday at a wide gathering of financial and professional services community including partners and regulators in Abuja There he reiterated that “transformation, from a regulatory perspective, means embedding discipline, transparency, innovation, and fairness so deeply into the fabric of the market that trust becomes instinctive, not conditional.”
“It means designing a system where compliance is not a burden but a catalyst for scale, efficiency, and investment. Above all, it means ensuring that every Nigerian—household, business, farmer, entrepreneur—feels the protection and economic empowerment that a strong insurance system provides.”
With a chopper view of the assembly Omosehin said, “This forum is timely and essential. It brings together the leadership of banking, insurance, capital markets, pensions, asset management, fintech, professional services, and the wider real economy to move from diagnosis to coordinated action. For insurance, the test before us is clear: convert low penetration and limited public confidence into inclusive growth, resilience, and relevance for households, MSMEs, and national development.”
He emphasised that “NAICOM’s guiding principle is regulation that builds trust and unlocks growth. Purposeful regulation does three things simultaneously:
Protects policyholders through clear conduct standards, timely claims settlement, capital strength, and credible enforcement.
Tracing the transformation of the sector to policies put in place before NIIRA 2025; However, he cleared that the new Insurance Reform Act provided the impetus to scale the transformation. With NIIRA 2025 now in force, we have a once in a generation opportunity to modernise the rulebook, raise governance and prudential standards, accelerate digitisation, and expand access.
He provides a close up picture of the doings of NAICOM to be seen in effective regulation, where balance, is not a tradeoff. “It requires a delicate balance between enforcement, compliance and growth: Firm where it matters: capital adequacy, liquidity, reinsurance quality, claims discipline, AML/CFT, and truthful disclosures are nonnegotiable. Flexible where it helps: proportional requirements for microinsurers and digital natives; sandbox pathways for new models; outcome based rules that accommodate technology and alternative distribution. Faster where it counts: service level commitments for approvals and market entries; digitised filings; data once—used many times.
His promise, “We will continue to reduce regulatory uncertainty, compress decision timelines, and collaborate with sister regulators to eliminate duplications that slow product deployment or raise costs for consumers.
“Our long term vision is a stronger, more competitive, and more developmental insurance market: one that protects Nigerians through life’s shocks, mobilises long term savings into productive investment, and underwrites the country’s ambition to be Africa’s most dynamic financial hub,” he stated.
