Babington-Ashaye’s 10-months of awareness creation, education for insurance industry
When Funmi Babington-Ashaye, president and chairman of council of the Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria (CIIN) assumed office on 25th July 2017, as woman and 48th president of the Institute, not many believed she was going to achieve her set goals in just a tenure of one year.
With lot of dreams on insurance awareness and education, the concern was not only on her ability to get needed funding within the time frame, but also on whether as a woman she will have all the energy required to drive the projects.
With the theme of her Presidency being “Insurance-imperative for Education and Enlightenment”, targeted at strategically addressing observed information gap that exists between the insurance profession/industry and the insuring public/other stakeholders, Babington-Ashaye has not only achieved her set goals, but has also succeeded in putting insurance industry on a higher scale.
On insurance awareness, Babington-Ashaye was able to distributed insurance textbooks across different secondary schools in Nigeria as well as tertiary institutions offering insurance; trained heads of department of universities and polytechnics offering insurance, as well as publication of e-newsletter for the Institute. All of these cumulated in increased membership enrolment to over 12.5 percent currently.
Other efforts towards awareness creation includes ‘Catch Them Young’ project where over 700 Youth Corps Members in Lagos were exposed to insurance careers. At the end of the programme, Insurance Agency Certificates were issued to them with referral letters to aid their internship in insurance firms during the course of their service year.
There was also establishment and accreditation of insurance department in higher institutions, where the Niger Delta University in Bayelsa State was accreditated for a BSc Insurance programme which has been approved by the National Universities Commission.
Other areas of success by Babington-Ashaye led CIIN include collaboration with the University of Lagos on introduction of an MSc degree in Insurance and Risk Management by the university; Exchange Programme with insurance market in Hong Kong; Collaboration with CII, UK aimed at enhancing the quality of our training programmes and examination processes; as well as College of Insurance and Financial Management.
Another success area was regular advocacy, which involved reaching out to key stakeholders, policy makers including top Government functionaries to persuade them to create an enabling environment for insurance to thrive in their domains and also for them to embrace the Insurance philosophy.
Pursuant to this, the CIIN during her tenure visited and engaged key public functionaries to encourage them to see insurance not only as a great profession but also to leverage insurance products to secure public sector assets and enhance their ability to create wealth for this and future generations.
To ensure that members continue to discharge their professional duties with high ethical disposition, the revised edition of the Code of Ethics for Insurance Practitioners in Nigeria will be launched during the National Insurance Conference which will be held from 8th – 10th July 2018 in Abuja. This Code, which applies to all Insurance Practitioners, clearly define how they should deal with issues and their responsibilities to clients, the general public, government, regulators, the Institute and their professional colleagues, Babington Ashaye stated.
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