Nigeria’s Insurance Industry Sees Changes as Top 10 Insurers Post N472.6bn Premium

A Dataset Showing Nigeria’s Top 10 insurers by gross written premium (GWP) is giving analysts the encouragement to suggest emerging dynamism in the country’s insurance landscape that could position it for enhanced growth and greater development. The data do not, however, show that insurance penetration in Africa’s most populous country and its largest economy by gross domestic product (GDP) size, is about to improve, but a combined gross premium of N472.6 billion by the 10 top insurers is given comfort to analysts to suggest that something positive lies ahead for the industry. Analysts say the emerging dynamism in the Nigerian insurance market going by the dataset can be seen in the increasing growth of life business against a general business which is traditionally the industry’s mainstay; the fact that indigenous insurers are still holding ground as far as industry leadership is concerned; that bankers have moved into insurance to dominate and bring banking industry Midas touch to the industry to give it a shakeout; and the data showing that the frontier for growth is in the composite model, while that of competition lies in microinsurance, Takaful and insurtech.