Experts harps on poor investment habit, lack of data in insurance industry
L-r: Mr. Nona Awoh, notable financial analyst/Resource person, and Mr. Lekan Otufodunrin, Executive Director, Media Career Development Network/resource person, during the National Association of Insurance and Pension Correspondents (NAIPCO) training workshop in Lagos recently
Proper Investment plan and data driven journalism are apt in ensuring business continuity as well as proper sensitisation of the public on insurance products, experts have said.
Speaking at the 2020 National Association of Insurance and Pension Correspondents (NAIPCO) Members’ Training on Developmental Financial Journalism in Lagos recently, financial analyst and Shareholder, Mr. Nona Awo, urged insurers to avail Insurance journalists of data to ensure proper dissemination of information to their respective shareholders and stakeholders.
Awo, who was a facilitator at the training, stressed that though insurance revolves round paying of premium and claims, it is, however, first an Investment targeted at curbing risk, as well as ensuring returns on investment.
He revealed that, there are a lot of Investment windows in the country whereby when maximised can place the industry on a better pedestrian to increase its contribution to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
“It is important to talk about Investment in Insurance as it tells you about today and tomorrow returns,” he said. He called on insurers to appoint investment experts on their board of Directors who will help them in articulating strategic plans to make good profit from investment made.
He highlighted poor investment habit as one of the major reasons why some insurers find it difficult to settle claims when it arises. “One of the major challenges in the industry is claims settlement which can be resolved with proper investment plans that gives outstanding returns,” he stressed.
Also speaking, a media career development specialist, Mr. Lekan Otufodunrin, who spoke on Developmental Reporting and Opportunities, described data journalism as the ability to analyse and examine numbers and to know how to manage large data sets and read them correctly.
Otufodunrin urged journalists to focus more on reporting and analyzing data while reporting insurance activities to promote awareness and sensitise the public on the need to insure.
According to him, story telling should be enhanced with infographics, data analysis, transcripts, to mention but a few., adding that the industry needs a workflow that consists of digging deep into data by scraping, cleansing and structuring it, filtering by mining for specific information, visualizing and making a story.
“Our platforms are no longer traditional, we are now multi-media, our audience are now more sophisticated and have access to multiple sources of information” he said.
