Some Stakeholders in the Nigerian Insurance Industry have called on the Nigerian Media to support the growth and sustainability of the Insurance Industry in Nigeria. This plea was made at a recent town hall meeting held with Insurance and other financial institutions correspondents representing both the print and electronic media in the country. According to one of the participants, “the role of the Media as watchdog in the society cannot be undermined especially in matters that is in the interest of the general populace. He however, he sounded a note of caution that Journalists should not allow themselves to be used as agents of negativity in the society just because of their own personal interests.
He further said that “the Media is very critical to the development and sustenance of the Insurance Industry considering the fact, that, there are a lot of challenges facing the sector which are being addressed by stakeholders and business owners in the sector”. At a point like this, one would expect that the media would play the role of an objective watchdog in helping to build and reinvigorate the confidence of the insuring public towards the sector, rather, than the attempted damaging reports that we see in the pages of some newspapers in recent times to discredit some players in the insurance industry for one reason or the other best known to those crop of journalists who have chosen to be on the negative side of the divide.
Another participant posited that, “businesses, at some point in time, faces one form of challenges or the other and that what some of the players are facing currently, is not peculiar to the Insurance Industry alone, therefore, those journalists who are reveling in negative journalism should desist from such act forthwith. “We are concerned stakeholders in the Insurance Industry and we will not allow bad Press wish away our fortunes and investments”. The responsibility of the Media in this regard is quite phenomenal and must be carried out with astute professionalism.” I must commend the efforts of all the Insurance Correspondents in the various Newspaper Houses in the country. Their intervention in reporting insurance news and happenings is quite commendable and more can still be done in pushing the frontiers of the Industry, he concluded.
What the industry need more than ever is acceptability and patronage from all strata of the society; both at the Corporate and Individual level and that can only come with a better understanding of the workings of the insurance business which unfortunately, a lot of Nigerians don’t have. The education on insurance can never be enough at this point in time. “We must move away from the level of assumptions to that of informed opinion and ultimately, acceptance” asserted that the Electronic Media is still miles away compared to what the Print Media has done in terms of reporting insurance news in the country. He said going by the amount of patronage Insurance companies have given to the Electronic Media in form of advertisement, one would have expected that the gesture would have been reciprocated but much hasn’t been done in that regard. He called for a synergy of ideas between the Electronic and Print Media so that the education and awareness of insurance in the country can be robust and holistic.
In support of the growth agenda for the Insurance Industry in Nigeria and as a way of rewarding outstanding insurance Correspondents both in the Electronic and Print Media, Sovereign Trust Insurance Plc endorsed a DAME Award, (Diamond Award for Media Excellence) in perpetuity in 2007 for the Insurance Correspondent of the Year.
In 2009, the company in conjunction with other notable Insurance companies in the country pioneered a sponsored Insurance media/PR campaign tagged ‘Life Happens” aimed at generating awareness and patronage for the Insurance Industry. More recently, the Chartered Insurance Instituted of Nigeria, CIIN has taken the insurance awareness campaign to the airwaves through the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, FRCN with the aim of getting its message across to the grassroots.