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Lamido Sanusi and Alhaji Umaru Ibrahim
A blessing in disguise for the nation's insurance industry because many experienced ex-bankers are now proving to be useful additions to the workforce of insurance companies.
However, not all the ex-bankers are able to secure plum management positions in the insurance firms. Our correspondent learnt that many of them have had to make do with the work of insurance agents.
Investigation on Wednesday revealed that many of the ex-bankers, who were affected by the mergers and acquisitions in the banking industry, had found their way into the insurance industry as agents.
This year alone, the banks have laid off thousands of workers with Access Bank Plc sacking 1,500 workers it inherited from Interncontinental Bank Plc in January following its acquisition of the latter.
Similarly, First City Monument Bank Plc sacked about 550 employees of Finbank in April, as part of an ongoing integration process of the two institutions that will be concluded by June.
The Group Managing Director, FCMB, Mr. Ladi Balogun, had explained that the bank was trying to achieve the synergies anticipated in the merger with Finbank by closing 44 of the latter's existing 183 branches, which had created 550 redundancies as a result of overlapping functions.
Ecobank Transnational Incorporated, which bought over Oceanic Bank International Plc, sacked over 1,850 of the acquired bank; while Enterprise Bank Limited, which was formerly Spring Bank Plc before its nationalisation by the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation, retrenched 150 workers within three days in February.
Commenting on the influx of ex-bank workers into the insurance industry, the Chief Executive Officer, Riskgaurd Pension and Insurance Consultant, Mr. Yemi Soladoye, said, "We now have mature people from the banking sector and their own method of approach to business is more aggressive than our own."
According to him, the entrance of former bankers into the insurance sector is a positive development for the industry.
"For some clients that I work for, we have been able to recruit about 200 former bank employees," Soladoye said.
The Managing Director, Goldlink Insurance Plc, Mr. Femi Okunniyi, who observed that the insurance industry had remained relatively stable compared to other sectors, said insurance companies had lately been recruiting more agents than full employees.
According to him, many of the new recruits are insurance agents, adding that they are usually placed on commission based on performance.
The Group Managing Director, Mutual Benefits Assurance Plc, Mr. Akin Ogunbiyi, said the company had developed its agency system and recruited thousands of insurance agents. He said, "The first sets of people that we have trained are those who have worked in standard places and have experience in different aspects of the Nigerian economy, especially the banks, and can immediately make impact on the insurance industry.
"We have the agency managers and we have the senior risk advisors, who are status agents.
Then, we have franchise dealers, who will graduate from risk advisors that we will support to run the chosen places as Mutual offices.They will sell all the policies."
The Managing Director, Crystalife Assurance Company Limited, Mrs. Seyi Ifaturoti, said if more people from the banking industry could join the insurance industry, it would drive insurance business faster.
"If we can have more people, who know where they are going in marketing, it will help to drive insurance products more to the populace," she said.
Marketing insurance products and policies in the developed countries, she said, was very lucrative, noting that most of their richest people started from marketing insurance.
Ifaturoti said,"I am sure the ex-bankers will be good in the area of marketing because insurance is a financial product and people who are good in the area of financial environment will be good in marketing financial products."
"Sometimes, many organisations employ fresh graduates who have not even worked before, but those who have worked in the financial industry before understand what it is about achieving their targets."