The Chairman of the Nigerian Insurers Association, Mr. Segun Omosehin, disclosed that the Consolidated Insurance Bill proposed in 2020 is going through the final legislative processes in preparation for presidential assent.

The insurance sector has shown resilience recently, expanding by 19.1% y/y in Q3-2022, according to the GDP report released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Furthermore, in Q2-2022, the sector recorded N369.28bn in premiums indicating 20.1% y/y growth.  However, industry penetration still sits below 2.0% (less than the global average of 7.0%) according to the African Insurance Organisation (AIO), and the share of insurance assets to GDP is less than 1.0%, indicating that Nigeria's insurance sector is still at its infancy stage. The industry is faced with several headwinds, such as the inability to build substantial capital reserves due to poor saving culture, premium flight, inconsistent legislature, heavy reliance on foreign expertise, and the lack of trust by the proletariat, among others.

The bill seeks to address many of these industry headwinds by rectifying shortcomings of the Insurance Act 2003. One of the improvements would be in the area of capitalisation. The bill has settled the definition of capital in the insurance domain, building on the framework in the Finance Act 2021, ending the incongruity between operators and regulators in the sector, which previously led to the cancellation of several proposed recapitalisation attempts by the regulator. The bill will also introduce harsher penalties for fake insurance certificate perpetrators, improving public trust and reintroducing the risk-based supervision capital model to align the industry with international best practices.