Cornerstone Opens Alaba Branch, Introduces ‘Oga Boy’ To Drive Retail Business

Left to Right: Stephen Alangbo (Managing Director / CEO); Mojolaoluwa Ajibade (Regional Manager, Lagos Region 4) and Charles Nwachukwu (General Manager Business Development) at the event.

Cornerstone Insurance Plc on Wednesday, August 21, 2024, opened a branch office at Alaba International Market, in addition to the Model Branch opened in Lekki, Lagos, the previous day August 21.

The opening of the Alaba International Market branch will help the underwriter distribute one of its newly developed products, ‘Oga Boy’, which aims to promote apprenticeship.

The Managing Director/CEO of Cornerstone Insurance Plc, Stephen Alangbo, speaking at the opening of the branch, said the opening of the Alaba branch is part of the Company’s strategies to drive retail business and deepen insurance penetration in the country.

“The opening of Lekki and Alaba International Market and other branches we are planning to open is one of our strategies in Cornerstone Insurance Plc to drive detail business and deepen insurance penetration in Nigeria.

“In building retail business, you have a sustainable business; in building retail business, you have the opportunity to take insurance penetration deeper; in building retail business, you have to have products that the people need; in building retail business, you create employment opportunities for people especially the youths who will be involved in marketing the products, even in this digital age, some of them are very savvy in the use of technology.  So, as an organization, we are paying more attention to retail.

“Long term, we are supporting that strategy with branch expansion, and digital enablement, to ensure that we achieve the goal. It’s not going to be only Alaba we are opening, we opened Lekki, our Model Branch yesterday; Lekki branch reflects Cornerstone because it is a Model Branch.

Left to Right: Charles Nwachukwu (General Manager, Business Development); Stephen Alangbo (Managing Director / CEO) and Mojolaoluwa Ajibade (Regional Manager, Lagos Region 4)

“In Lekki, we have fulfilled the promise we made to journalists last year, that we want to have a place in our office where journalists can walk in and use the internet facility and do their work, that’s part of what we achieved in Lekki.

“We are coming to Alaba because there is a need for businessmen and women in the market to take insurance. You will see that we don’t have any significant presence of insurance in Alaba and we thought that if you want to distribute insurance and make people with their ignorant to embrace it, you have to give them the product they want and come closer to them.

“Sometimes people buy a car and when there is an accident, they lose their investments. People who are in marketplaces, when there is fire incidence, they become poor automatically. In some families, when something happens to the breadwinner, the entire family is affected. We don’t need all these. We have one of our products “Oga Boy” if you pick somebody from the village to be your apprentice, and if he stays three years of five years with you, and by the time he is going, and because you don’t have money to settle that person, it becomes a problem between you and that person and even the family of the person will not be happy with you.

“Oga Boy allows you to plan for your apprentice from the first day he starts serving you. So when the person has completed the period of his service, Cornerstone pays the person off on your behalf.

“Apart from developing products, we are coming close to our people and we are helping our people to imbibe the culture of insurance. This makes our business sustainable because we have made the mode of premium payment for the product easier for them – some can pay monthly, some may pay weekly, and it grows our income and also creates employment for the people living within the market communities and environs,” he said.

The MD/CEO of Cornerstone said the Company is targeting seven to nine branches in the next year, adding that “this year we plan to open six branches. We started with Lekki and today Alaba. We will go to the East; we will go to the core north to have a wider distribution. We are going to have a Model Regional Office in Abuja, to make sure that we have a significant network for the distribution of our products and services in that part of the country.

He said, “We are also going to leverage cluster marketing which we call partnership in distributing our products and services in Alaba International Market. It helps us to reach many uninsured individuals easily. We have already related our intentions to the Chairman of the market and we have explained the benefits of insurance to them. One of the things that has worked for us is the pricing of our products. We have a product that is as cheap as N1,000 and when we are dealing with various associations in the market, it gives us access to many customers and also helps them to maximise the benefits of the various products we are bringing to them.”

Also speaking at the event, the General Manager, Business Development, Mr. Charles Nwachukwu, said as of 2023, Alaba International Market generated revenue of about $5 billion.

“A market that generates such a huge amount of revenue, of course, needs insurance to protect stocks, protect human capital, improve investment, because insurance is a risk mitigating mechanism,” he said.