Recapitalisation: Insurance elders meet to resolve legal disputes

Sunday Ojeme
Elders in the insurance industry will be meeting on Thursday (today) to deliberate on the current impasse in the industry as a result of the court injunction putting a halt to the ongoing recapitalisation programme.Disclosing this on Wednesday in Aba, Abia State, the President, Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria, Mr. Adeyemo Adejumo, said the meeting became necessary in order to resolve the issue amicably.Speaking to journalists at the National Insurance Conference being organised by the Nigerian Council of Registered Insurance Brokers in Aba, he said the conflict in the industry was not an indication that the practictioners did not welcome investors, saying that everything would, however, turn out better at the end of after the meeting of the elders.In his presentation at the event, the former President, Nigerian Institute of Management, Chief Lugard Aimiuwu, called on insurance operators to be abreast with globalisation in order to survive the attendant challenges common with consolidation.He said some stimulation was necessary at gestation stages of industry growth, which must increasingly yield to market forces to reduce avoidable trauma and allow steady access to abundant opportunities in a systemic manner.He said the evidence on ground was a mix bag but that the most challenging image included unhealthy, sometimes cut-throat jostling for positions in merged entities, which could only have one head at the top, squabbles over composition of new board, over-layered and under-spanned organisational architecture and structure as well as winner-take-all, loser spoil-all syndrome.According to him, "The resultant management challenges include having a competent and visionary leader as champion of change, while avoiding the sun-god syndrome, then developing appropriate marketing and customer strategies to address the new frocious scramble for market shares and attaining target performance under the new ferocious market pressure without compromising corporate governance and best practice."In the paper, titled, "Insurance Industry Consolidation - A Futuristic Perspective," he said any organisation that did not have a system or mechanism for recognising and tracking change, plus identifying and monitoring patterns and trends, was seriously endangered. Adejumo, who delivered the keynote address, said with the recapitalisation and consolidation, the industry could not and should not afford to relegate human capital development to the background.He said the successive leadership of the NCRIB had, undoubtedly brought the vast experience to bear in advancing the course of the brokers and ensuring that practitioners operated within the ambit of the guidelines and the enabling law."Topmost on the priorities of our profession is the need for all practitioners to embrace corporate governance ideas and codes of best practice. As insurance brokers, you are part and parcel of our collective quest to make our profession the pride of all," he said.Earlier in his welcome address, the outgoing president, NCRIB, Chief Babatunde Olatunde Agbeja, said a good number of the insurance companies were already driving home aggressive expansionist vision, leading them to have operational activities in the West African sub region and even beyond.He said, "All these would not have been possible with the small, fragmented nature of most of the companies some few years ago. It is unwise for the insurance industry to get itself squeezed into a small mold under any guise."