The National Insurance
Commission (NAICOM) has tasked Insurance companies on awareness creation for insurance policies.
Speaking to newsmen in Abuja on Monday the Federal Commissioner for Insurance Mr. Fola Daniel, said the level of Insurance awareness is still very low in Nigeria.
Daniel explained that to raise the level of insurance awareness in the country, NAICOM has reintroduced advertorial processing fee to ensure that operators are actually creating the much needed awareness about the insurance industry.
He said the commission reintroduced the advertorial processing fee to compel them, the operators to put such advertorials paid for in the public space.
He explained that the commission has discovered that some Insurance operators always pretend to embarking on awareness campaigns and record in their annual report to be spending huge sums of money on awareness campaigns and advertorials all amounting to be a hoax.
The NAICOM boss blamed some operators in the insurance industry for abusing the magnanimity of the commission which had made the processing and approval of advertorials free until recently and therefore never took the issue of awareness creation seriously.
He said the commission will henceforth penalise any operator who hoards approved designed campaign materials by the commission, stressing that the habit of flooding the commission with awareness campaign materials on insurance policies which were never in public after they were approved is over within the insurance industry.
He said although the insurance business began in the country about 95 years ago, the insurance gap in the country is about 96 per cent which implies that only four per cent of Nigerians have one form of insurance cover or the other.
The NAICOM boss urged Nigerians to always engage insurance operators to cover their business with insurance policies.