Business
Cornerstone Hails Insurance Best Practices
Cornerstone Insurance has commended professional brokers and other stakeholders in the collective drive to enhance the ethics and compliance with best practices in the Nigerian Insurance Industry.
Cornerstone Insurance recorded the highest gross premium earning in its 18 years of existence underwriting N3.8 billion in 2008, in spite of the adoption of a wholly ethnical approach to insurance business.
Mr. Adedotun Sulaiman, chairman Cornerstone Insurance Plc, at the yearly general meeting of the company in Lagos recently, said the top line performance of the company was due to supports from professional brokers, corporate Nigerian, institutions, businesses operators in the formal and informal sectors and individual policy holders.
According to him, despite choosing the ethnical route and emphasising that it will not pay bribe to acquire business, the company had tremendous support and patronage from professional brokers which saw it recording its all-time high gross premium of N3.8 billion.
Sulaiman said 80 per cent of Nigeria’s insurance businesses are controlled by brokers, which underlined their importance as strategic business partners are influencing factors in the drive to reposition the Nigerian insurance industry.
He called for closer collaboration between brokers and underwriters in the country to enable the industry give the highest value to policy takers adding that all stakeholders stand to benefit in the growth of the industry.
“Cornerstone as a responsive and transparent company, will always meet its obligation to brokers and those on whose behalf they placed their insurance risk with Cornerstone”, Sulaiman said.
He assured shareholders that the Company’s definitive strategic medium term growth plan would translate into significant shareholders’ value in the years ahead.
He said the company has undertaken comprehensive renew of its process and resources and already implementing measures to realise the company’s vision of being the leading insurance-based financial services company in Nigeria. According to him, the company’s unwavering commitment to enshrining an ethical culture and promoting best business practices informed its resolve to put in place a robust governance structure, which importance in the creation of shareholder value cannot be overemphasised.
We are taking sure and steady steps, more than ever before, to take advantage of the opportunities and are confident that the prospects are bright.
We are strengthening the leadership of the business – Life, General and Financial Services and intensifying our brand reputation in line with our corporate mission to deliver value beyond the expectations of stakeholders”, Sulaiman said.
He pointed out that in spite of the recession in the financial markets, the company has maintained its focus on building the company for sustainable success and leadership.
He noted that the company was constantly engaging its customers to identify and create tailor-made solutions to meet their needs as part of efforts to deepen existing market share and break new ground.
He urged shareholders and other stakeholders to support the on-going efforts by the company to redefine Nigerian insurance practice along ethical line noting that it is possible to business successfully without engaging in unethical practices.
He added that the nature of insurance business as a long-term business also requires understanding and patience given the ups and downs that sometimes characterise investments.
He said the company’s determination to ensure prompt claim payment irrespective of the global and national macro-economic conditions and the recession in the stock market adversely affected the performance of the company in 2008.
He noted that many one-off costs such as rebranding and relocation of the head office of the company in 2008 would not reoccur and as such mitigate costs while significantly adding value to the business.
He said the board took a courageous decision to make almost full provisions for the potential loss in the market value of its investments, although the recovering trend at the stock market suggests that the potential loss is unlikely to crystallise.
Audited report and accounts of Cornerstone Insurance for the year ended December 31, 2008 showed significant improvements in the top line and bottom-line with group gross premium rising but 37 per cent from N2.7 billion in 2008. Profit before tax and diminution in value of investment jumped by 76 per cent to N678.9 million in 2008 as against N386.6 million in 2007.
A provision of N1.11 billon as diminutions in value of investments however impacted negatively on the bottom-line, leaving the company with a net loss of N419.5 million in 2008 compared with a net profit of N325 million in 2007.
Sulaiman however assured shareholders that the company would deliver better results in 2009 noting the interim reports for the first half of the year showed significant improvements.
Cornerstone of Financial Services
A survey of more than 1 000 global finance leaders undertaken by digital payment network Ripple shows that 72% of respondents believe they need to offer a digital asset solution to remain competitive.
According to Ripple, leaders from the banking, fintech, corporate and asset management sector have made it clear that the “digital asset revolution is happening now”.
“Digital assets are quickly becoming a cornerstone of financial services, underpinned by progressive regulation, growing interest from Tier-1 banks, a steady consumer shift from banks to fintech providers, and booming stablecoin adoption,” Ripple says.
The survey was conducted in early 2026 and the findings released in March.
Stablecoin Boon or Bane?
Ripple has experienced significant success in the stablecoin sector since launching its Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin in 2024.
With a market cap of $1.56 billion, it is considered a major regulated player in the market.
No doubt the platform was pleased to learn through its own survey that financial leaders were most bullish about stablecoins.
Roughly three-quarters of respondents believed they could boost cash-flow efficiency and unlock trapped working capital.
Ripple noted that finance leaders were thinking about stablecoins as more than “just a new way to execute payments”; instead, they viewed them as effective tools for treasury management.
In March 2026, Ripple began testing a new trade finance model built around RLUSD in a bid to increase the speed of cross-border payments.
The pilot initiative, developed alongside supply chain finance company Unloq [https://unloq.com], is running on the XRP Ledger inside a testing framework developed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
The Asian city-state is one of the platform’s biggest growth markets.
The idea behind the project is to see whether stablecoin-based settlement can streamline trade finance, too often hampered by reliance on intermediaries and slow reconciliation.
The only potential drawback is that if the initiative takes off, the Ripple to USD price could be negatively affected.
Ripple has always championed its native XRP token as a bridge asset, the “middleman” in the process of a financial institution turning dollars in the US into pounds in the UK, for example.
Ripple converts dollars into XRP and then back into pounds.
If RLUSD can do exactly the same thing, questions will be asked about XRP’s relevance.
That is a bridge Ripple will have to cross if it gets to that point.
Tokenisation Partners
Another interesting finding from Ripple’s survey is that most banks and asset managers are seeking tokenisation partners to help execute their strategies.
Some 89% of respondents said digital asset storage and custody were top priority. “Token servicing/lifecycle management also ranks highly for banks at 82%, while asset managers place greater emphasis on primary distribution at 80%,” Ripple found.
The survey also revealed that just more than half of fintechs and financial institutions want an infrastructure provider that can offer a “one-stop-shop solution”. This rose to 71% among corporate financial leaders.
Ripple attributes this to institutions and firms wanting uncomplicated, cohesive systems.
Infrastructure Rules
In its final analysis, Ripple says companies across the board are looking for partners and solutions that are “secure, compliant, battle-tested and that enable growth and execution”.
“The message is clear: infrastructure decisions made today will shape competitive positioning tomorrow.”
No surprise that this is precisely where Ripple is placing much of its focus.
