INTERVIEW WITH A CEO: HOW I ACCIDENTALLY ENTERED THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY AND NEVER LOOKED BACK- OTUNBA LADI OWOLABI, CEO Universal Consult Brokers Ltd

... As He Speaks On The Importance Of Corporate Social Responsibility For Insurance Companies

... Says It's Beyond Keeping Business Owners' Money

Otunba Ladi Owolabi is the Managing Director/CEO of Universal Assurance Consult Brokers Ltd. Abuja. He recently commissioned a multimillion naira project in Ado Ekiti under ASTUTE F.M.C.G (Procurement & Investment) his company and he was honoured by HRM, Oba Joshua O. Osalusi (JP), The Olorun of Orun Ekiti in Ifelodun / Irepodun Local Government Area of Ekiti State with an Award of Excellence.

Publisher of Event Diary Lifestyle, Princess Adeola Shittu was at the Abuja headquarters of Universal Assurance Consult Brokers Ltd where Otunba Ladi Owolabi spoke about his life and his career in the insurance sector. Enjoy!!!.

Tell us about yourself.

Thank you very much; I’m Otunba James Ladi Owolabi, popularly known as Oga Ladi by my Ado Ekiti people. I was born in Ado Ekiti six decades ago into the family of the late Pa Owolabi and late Princess Oja Omogbolare of Ojido quarters, Odo Ado, Ado Ekiti. I attended St. George’s Primary School, Ado Ekiti, and I proceeded to Notre Dame College, Usi Ekiti, for my secondary school. I did my HSC before proceeding to the West Africa Insurance Institute, Monrovia, Liberia, where I bagged a degree in Insurance. I had my MBA in Corporate Finance from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, and my Post Graduate Diploma (PGD) in Accounts from Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba Akoko, Ondo State. I'm an Associate of the Chartered Insurance Institute of London. To the glory of God, I’m a chartered insurer and the Managing Director/CEO of Universal Assurance Consult Brokers Limited, Abuja. I'm also the Manager/Head of the International Department of the Nigeria Reinsurance Corporation. I’m a consultant to government agencies and parastatals. I also served as Executive Director of Northern Operations for Mutual Benefit Assurance Plc.

I was also the Managing Director of Lister Insurance Company, Ibadan; the Manager/Head of Training and Development of the National Insurance Commission, Abuja; and I also served as the Managing Director of Crystal Insurance Company. It will interest you to know that I’m a visiting lecturer at the prestigious West Africa Insurance Institute, Banjul, The Gambia, and also a lecturer at the Nigeria Insurance Institute, Lagos, and the Nigeria Re-insurance Training School, Lagos. I tell people that I’m a pure insurance person, a chartered insurance expert and a professional insurance guru.

How was growing up like for you?

Growing up in Ado Ekiti was very interesting and fun; as a young child, I enjoyed everything a child should enjoy. I grew up having fun and that is why I don’t joke with Ado Ekiti, aside from my maternal grandmother’s place in Orun Ekiti. When we were growing up, we didn’t lack anything; life was not as risky as it is now, and life was safe with less security everywhere. Back then, we all knew each other, and no child misbehaved compared to Ado Ekiti of today, which has become a metropolitan city with different people coming in and out of the town every day, but the real Ado Ekiti people knew each other.

What inspired you to study insurance and not another course?

Well, I will say my going into insurance was accidental because growing up I had two things I wanted to be in life; I had the ambition to become a medical doctor or a military officer.

Why the Army?

In those days, we believed that it was only rich people who could join the Army because of the class of people there and I believed as a young child that my parents had the capacity too. I applied and I passed the NDA (Nigeria Defence Academy) exam. A night before leaving Ado Ekiti for Osogbo before I moved to Kaduna to start my military journey, my mother came to me in the middle of the night and she was able to persuade me not to join the Army, stating that since my father passed away, she told God that she did not want to lose any of her children and now I wanted to join the Army; that was how the idea was aborted and I dropped my ambition for the second option, which was to become a medical doctor. In those days, before you were given admission to the university, you would have at least four credits in related subjects that you want to study aside from credits in English Language and Mathematics. I had five credits in English, Mathematics, Biology, Chemistry and another subject, but in my ‘A’ levels, I failed Biology but passed Chemistry; the educational system then was not as easy as it is now where you can reseat easily. While I was thinking about what to do with my life, thinking about whether to go back and join the Army or rewrite the exam and go to school, one of my brothers sent me to his friend at Royal Exchange Insurance. On that faithful, I was sent on an errand to Royal Exchange at 31 Marine Street, Lagos Island, to meet with the then Area Manager, Rev. Carlos, a Lagosian, by my brother, and on getting there, I saw young chaps like me, who were well dressed and were waiting at the reception of the company; before I entered Rev. Carlos's office, I asked the secretary what the young men were waiting for and she said they came for a

job interview and looking at the environment, it was very neat compared to where I worked as a poster clerk at the General Post Office. I asked the lady if I could also join the interview and she told me to tell the manager that I came to see and I did; the same day, I sat for the exam, wrote my application letter and I was asked to bring my documents. I came first and going by my performance, the company prepared a bond for me in order not to run away and my brother’s friend took me to C. T. Bowring Insurance Brokers Limited and that was how I started my insurance career.

So, when I said it was accidental, I was referring to the circumstances that led to me joining insurance; the profession was not in my plan. Today, it has become a profession I love so much; I am passionate about insurance and I’m not just practising it, I’m a visiting lecturer at the prestigious West Africa Insurance Institute, Banjul, The Gambia.

Sir, looking back at your journey in the insurance industry, is there any time you felt like quitting the profession?

No, I have never thought of quitting the profession, not for any reason. There are challenges but I have developed my passion so much that I don’t see anything as a challenge. I don’t want the industry to die and I have been mentoring people who are going to take over the industry from us. I’m proud to say that I belong to various insurance associations whose major target and interest is to mentor and see the youth growing in the industry and also prepare them to take over from us.

How will you rate insurance policies in Nigeria?

We are still far from it. It will interest you to know that 10 per cent of the Nigerian population is yet to key into an insurance policy, which is the premium income in Nigeria despite our population, which is almost half the population of the entire African continent. Small countries like Zimbabwe and Algeria have premium income that is four times higher than Nigeria’s premium income. We can’t go near South Africa in terms of premium income. What many don’t know is that insurance is a very lucrative profession and at the same time serves as a lubricant for our economy. You can imagine that with Nigeria's population today if 50 million people contribute N2,000 each month for 10 years, I bet that Nigeria will not borrow money from the World Bank, the IMF or other foreign banks to run the economy, the funds will borrow from the insurance purse with lower service interest rate and our dear country will be better off if they have embraced insurance. In a country like the UK and others, the insurance firms are the ones providing the funds and it will be refunded back to them when their government needs it. Insurance companies are referred to as “A doju ti o fo” (an institution that mitigates losses) because life is full of uncertainties as anything can happen at any time, but if one insures his business or properties, they can sleep with their two eyes closed and that is why we advise business owners and individuals to insure their businesses, properties, lives and everything insurable.

Coming back to Nigeria, in the aftermath of Endsars protests in Lagos State, many insurance companies are still paying for the destruction and properties that were destroyed during the protests and you can imagine what would have happened if they were not insured. I tell people that money lost to an individual or a company is a loss to the economy. In a nutshell, insurance is what any reasonable person should key into. Everything about me is insurance, I eat insurance, I drink insurance and insurance is me.

Going by your years of experience and exposure in the insurance industry, what are the things Nigerians can do to embrace insurance policies like citizens of other African countries?

Thank you very much; any society that is devoured or lacks adequate information, such a society should look closely and be careful. Also, any profession that you want to build needs information. Insurance is a service industry and the companies sell tangible commodities that nobody sees, All our trade bodies such as the Nigeria Insurance Association (NIA) and the Nigerian Council of Registered Insurance Brokers (NCIRIB) are now at the forefront of publicity; even the regulatory body, the National Insurance Commission, is now doing newspaper adverts and lots of things out there. The dissemination of information and publicity done by this organisation has not been effective in the sense that we want to see an insurance company performing corporate social responsibility to society; the means of publicity shouldn’t be limited to print or electronic advertising. Insurance companies are not just to make money and keep it for the owners, we need to give back to society and by doing so, we are advertising our companies and services to the people.

There is nothing wrong if insurance companies construct 2km of road in their areas of operation or states they operate from and they will put their logo there. These are some of the things we look forward to doing in my company, Universal Assurance Consult Brokers. We need more publicity to promote insurance to the people and for the growth of our economy in Nigeria; the publicity from the three bodies is not adequate and that is why we don’t have lots of people in insurance, in addition to some other conditions like non-embracement of total insurance facilities. One of them is religion; some people believe everything belongs to God, I also believe that, but there is a popular adage that says, ‘Heaven helps those who help themselves’ and if because of religion you build an empire or house with your hard earned money and you just left it like that without insuring it in these days whereby fire can occur accidentally or anything can happen and you decide not to insure it, such a person is on his own.

Second is inadequate disposable income; this means that when somebody is paid his or her salary and the money is not even enough for him or her to do one or two things and you are asking such a person to come and buy insurance, that will be difficult to do for such person. The third is greed; for some of our people to insure their lives against death is difficult. For instance, I had an interaction with some people and I asked them to come and take up death insurance, but they asked me who would now inherit it because when they were gone their wives would be enjoying their wealth with their concubines; such people forget that they have children who are their dependants, which is what death insurance policy is all about so that they are not subjected to sorrow in the hands of the family. Abroad, no amount of money can be paid that will be adequate, but one can create a disposable income from it.

For example, when you look at the money spent on recharge cards daily, the amount is enough to buy an insurance policy and these are the things we are talking about, but all these things are not there; the more the population, the more is supposed to be access to insurance for the country. The likes of Zimbabwe enjoyed the premium life insurance more than Nigeria; even in other aspects of business, we have not reached there but I know that one day, somehow, we will get there. In the UK, insurance companies are the ones that own banks and they also facilitate finance for some manufacturers through the same banks, but in Nigeria, the reverse is the case; it is the banks that want to own insurance companies because of the money.

As an insurance expert who is well experienced in the field, what are some of the solutions?

The solutions are coming up gradually. Today, some schools are now taking insurance as a main course. In LASU, Lagos State Polytechnic, University of Ibadan, UNILAG and Ahamdu Bello University, Zaria, one can study insurance to any level. As I said earlier, the awareness should be taken up. The kind of educational system in Nigeria does not give a child the chance to decide or take possession of what they want to be in life compared to the US and some other countries, where they discover the talent of their children at an early age and they channel all efforts into ensuring that the children achieve their dreams. I believe that when we start to create insurance awareness in secondary schools, I believe that there will be more improvement and people will continue to build trust in insurance.

There is this general belief when it comes to advertising that the regulator guides the insurance companies on what to do. Why is this so?

No rule or regulation prevents an insurance company or a brokering firm not to advertise. In those days, some insurance companies did commercials and they still do now, while others do not. But I believe that publicity should go beyond print and electronic advertising; publicity is part of those things we do as our social responsibility to the society or community we are in. There is nothing wrong if an insurance company that is doing business on Life and has already hosted a profile on Life account goes to an area with doctors to provide free eye clinic and free glasses for the people; it will be on record that it was an insurance company that did that; this is part of what we want to do and I can start it tomorrow or very soon.

In line with your profession, are any of your children taking after you in insurance?

Well, I will say that my first son, who is based in the UK, is working with a broker firm and I believe that when the time comes, he should be able to marry what he learned over there with the Nigerian insurance industry. I can't say I want insurance to improve if I don’t have any of my children taking after me in the insurance industry. Like I said, let's leave everything to God; it’s a decision of God and when the time comes, the child that will take over from me will surely do.