Insurance penetration gets a boost as Universal brings Nollywood Actors on board
The efforts to increase insurance penetration in Africa’s most populated country has received a boost with signing of partnership agreement between Universal Insurance Plc and Actors Guild of Nigeria (AGN) for group personal accident policy for members of the group.
The Group Personal Accident Policy is designed to provide some level of benefits to the practitioners for death, permanent disability and medical expenses in the event of a loss occuring.
Nigeria’s insurance industry is pushing to increase insurance penetration, from its less than 1 percent of the GPD, with a lot of initiatives including micro insurance, Takaful, agric insurance ad bancassurance.
Industry regulator, the National Insurance commission(NAICOM) is positive to increase penetration with a lot of market development initiatives, which if keyed in by operators given a conducive business environment will make the Nigerian market a major player in Africa.
The Nollywood Actors have about 150, 000 members spread across the country in its register and provides a good market for selling of insurance for a better benetration. The event, which attracted Who’s Who in the Nollywood industry saw the actors jubilating on the unveiling of the special package, according to some of them who spoke to the media, the development was a dream come true for actors who are always exposed to varying degrees of occupational hazards without any form of compensation.
They believe that unveiling of the insurance cover for them symbolized unity of purpose and provided sense of belonging and direction from the current team of excos to the members of the body.
Emeka Rollas Ejezie, president of the group vowed to uphold the tenet of the AGN in ensuring that members are safe and in an event of the unforeseen circumstances such a member has something to fall back on in terms of compensation by insurance service providers.
On whether he was satisfied with a one million naira death or permanent disability benefit per member, he said: “You know when you are starting something there are two risks that you are running, the company is running its risk and we are running a risk too. They are not dashing us money and we are not dashing them money as well. By the time we experiment it for one year and see what it looks like, then we are up it.
He said he was delighted and overwhelmed that this has to happen in his time. Also asked in affirmative what he would do if his members fail to comply with the new rule, he assured that after one month of grace those who refused to have insurance for their protection on stage would be barred from appearance.
Explaining the policy contents, Ben Ujoatuonu, managing director/CEO Universal Insurance who packaged the policy stated that the policy has three features, which include the hospitalization, permanent disability, and death benefits if the unfortunate occurs to any member of the group.
I am delighted in the sense that we have been able to achieve this by working together with the new leadership of AGN to ensure that we get something that will add value to them and give them a reason to belong to their association, so it is encouraging. I am also happy that Universal Insurance was able to work this out for the group.
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