By Bisi Bamishe
The 52nd President of Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria, Mrs Yetunde Olubunmi Ilori reeled out her achievements during valedictory virtual press conference held in Lagos today.
According to her, on assumption of office, she came with a theme which was “Igniting the Bedrock of our Envisioned Industry” and that was implemented under the agenda of ‘EPIC’, where E stands for Education, P for Professionalism, I for Institutional and Individual Recognitions and C for Capacity Building.
According to Ilori her administration was driven by EPIC Agenda which provided roadmap for strengthening the institute and positioning insurance as an essential pillar of Nigeria’s economic and financial resilience.
Under Education, she disclised that the institute moved beyond the industry “to create awareness that will deepen penetration, to get people knowledgeable about the concept of insurance that will help them in making decision to purchase insurance cover that will benefit them, and to also position insurance as the financial strength of the entire economy”.
“To help us with this we came up with the Insurance Week. Under Insurance Week, there were a number of initiatives that came with it that took us beyond just ourselves having meetings, but included Market Outreach, Public Engagement, including NAIPE members helping us to publicise the programmes”.
She noted that the EPIC initiative has guided several reforms introduced into CIIN, a move which according to her has strengthened the institute and assisted it to contribute to broader reforms within the insurance sector.
“We also engaged the youths because one of the things that is certain is that we believe that the future belongs to the youths and the future is now and we found a way to tell them that insurance is not about a specific people, is a profession of even tomorrow, not just yesterday and to let them know that they have opportunity they can latch on to, to progress their career.
“So we had the hackathon where we brought students, insurance practitioners, non-insurance practitioners; it was a combination of insurance, technology and innovation that met and they came up with solution people are looking at.
In addition to visiting secondary schools and tertiary institutions to create the needed awareness about insurance, she stated that the institute came up with the publication of two books – one for ages four to 10 and another for ages 11 to 16.
“We took insurance to primary schools because we wanted to demystify insurance. We created books for them titled Insurance for Beginners. I even went to my alma mater to distribute the books myself because we believe insurance education should start from childhood,” she said.
Ilori also disclosed that the institute had sustained its annual insurance quiz competition for tertiary institutions, noting that the latest edition held in May was won by the Lagos State University of Science and Technology (LASUSTECH).
Beyond educational reforms, Ilori said the institute made significant progress in the digital transformation of its operations and examinations. According to her, plans are underway to fully migrate the institute’s professional examinations to a computer-based platform across West Africa, a move she said would eliminate the need for candidates to travel long distances to examination centres.
“We are now looking at the possibility of students writing insurance foundation examinations online; that is, to make it computer-base since it is mostly objectives”, she stated.
Making reference to the impacts of the CIIN when it comes to capacity building Mrs Ilori declared that the College of Insurance and Financial Management which is the brain child of the institute have continued to evolve as a dependable peg in human resource upgrade for the industry.
She acknowledged the contributions of insurance companies and notable individuals in assisting the college achieve its objectives, adding that the programme initiated for ensuring the training of one million Nigerian youths on insurance is still ongoing.
According to her, CIIN was a major participant in the move to ensure that the Nigerian Insurance Industry Reform Act (NIIRA 2025) became a reality, after the industry had been operating with outdated law for decades.
