Leadway Journalism Training: Adegbayi harps on benefits of Term Life Insurance

A cross section of journalists at the training

The Executive Director, General Business, Leadway Assurance Company Limited, Ms. Adetola Adegbayi called on Nigerians to avail themselves with the numerous benefits offer by Term Life Insurance, describing it as “money in your pocket you can never save.”

Adegbayi speaking at the training workshop organized by Leadway for members of the National Association of Insurance and Pension Correspondents (NAIPCO) in Lagos recently, said Term  Life Insurance has a lot of benefits for all classes of people with a guaranteed period.

“If you are a middle income person and you buy an endowment based or a savings based life Assurance, essentially, it is your money.  It is just that the insurance company have guaranteed that within a period of 10 years, you will get certain amount of money back. If anything happens, that amount goes to your beneficiaries. We also have a free life cover of about N1 million, in life saving policy.

“If, as a middle income earner, you have N5 million as your annual salary, you may not be able to save that exact amount of money. Even if you are very tight in your saving culture, you may save the N5 million in five years time and that is possible only if you can save 20 per cent of your income every year.

“But can you imagine being able to immediately leave N10 million for your beneficiaries; N10 million, that is double you annual salary. That is what Term Life Insurance is. It is taking a little of your money to actually buy N10 million, N15 million or N20 million, depending on what you want,” she added.

Continuing, “Term Life Insurance is the cheapest form of insurance. With Term Life Insurance, you can buy N10 million with just N50,000. Now, assuming you save N50,000 for 10 years, that is N500,000. N10 million is still way higher than N500,000 that you can get in 10 years. Assuming you keep aside N50,000 for 20 years, that is N1 million. But with Term Life Insurance, with just N50,000, you can earn up to N10 million, that will be given to your beneficiaries.

“There are various expressions of Term  Life Insurance:  one expression of Term  Life Insurance is funeral expenses. Another expression of Term Life Insurance is mortgage protection insurance. So assuming you borrow a money to buy a house and if anything happen during that period, nobody will come and collect the house from your children, the insurance company would pay off your debt,”

During his lecture, one of the facilitators at the training, Omoh Iruobe who spoke on some of the products offer by the company such as the Leadway Target Plan, helps the policyholder to achieve his personal goals.

He said the product also guarantees one to meet his financial obligations, which may include financing a child’s education, starting a new business, purchase a car/house and even augmenting retirement benefits.

For Leadway Personal Annuity Plan, Iruobe said is a pension plan that is guaranteed to pay you income right from retirement and throughout your lifetime. With this Annuity Plan, he said your income is guaranteed, no matter what happens, the rate on amount payable to you is relatively higher and your investment risk is borne by Leadway Assurance.

He said the Leadway Personal Savings Plan is a secure, flexible, high-returns means of building up a fund towards meeting any goal, protecting you and your loved ones from financial burdens that may arise from unexpected death or accidental permanent disability.

The Leadway Family Benefit Plan Plus, according to the insurance agent, is another policy that is a one-stop funeral insurance plan that provides handy financial support for burial expenses of elderly loved ones like parents and parent in-laws, policy holder and spouse. “It also helps cushion the loss of income to immediate family members of the policy holders,” he added.

The training was focused on critical areas of the Insurance sector such as endowment plans, maintaining operational standards in insurance as well as other areas relating to Pensions.

The quarterly training initiative by Leadway Assurance, according to Head, Corporate Communications/Services, Ms. Olubunmi Adeleye is in recognition of the need for journalists to be abreast of latest industry trends both locally and globally given their important role as purveyors of news and information that the insuring and un-insuring public depend on to form opinions about insurance and the economy.

“The core of Leadway’s corporate philosophy is hinged on ensuring the growth and sustainability of the Nigerian economy through deepening education and access to insurance and financial services. In achieving this objective, we see the media as a critical partner and stakeholder, hence the need to collaborate”, she stated.

The Leadway Assurance spokeswoman expressed the hope that “the Leadway Journalism Training initiative would continue to help participating journalists improve their mastery of the inner workings and technicalities of the insurance sector, causing stakeholders in the industry to benefit more from the professional interventions and engagements of the media in a win-win manner.”

It would be recalled that the maiden edition of the Leadway Journalism Training project held in October 2017, when Leadway Assurance collaborated with NAIPCO to organize the first of its kind comprehensive training workshop for members as part of the 2017 NAIPCO Conference to facilitate capacity building for insurance correspondents.

Leadway Assurance is one of Nigeria’s foremost insurance service companies with a reputation for service efficiency and customer reliability. The organization is committed to bridging the financial protection gap and increasing the rate of insurance penetration in Nigeria.

In her closing remarks, NAIPCO President, Omobola Tolu-Kosimo of the Nation Newspapers, thanked Leadway for the training and prayed for the success of the company.

Journalists were exposed to the following topics during the training: Understanding Life Assurance Focus on Investment and Endowment Plans; Key Highlights of Pension Review Act 2014; Maintaining Operations Standards in Insurance and Investment Guidelines and Instruments.