The Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, NCDMB, has advised Nigerian Insurance Firms to boost their financial standing to position them to underwrite bigger risks in the oil and gas industry.

The executive secretary of the Board Simbi Wabote, stated this at the November edition of Insurers Committee meeting in Lagos, adds, “Consolidating their ownership will present opportunities for growth of insurance industry”.

Wabote said although there are challenges militating against the industry such as lack of capacity to undertake big ticket transactions like provision of brokerage services of insurance covers for projects, the size of $3 billion, for example, there are several modalities that could be adopted to surmount the challenge.”

According to him, the Nigerian content level is meant to create 300,000 direct jobs and retain over $14 billion income out of the $20 billion spent yearly on oil and gas industry. He said it had developed a 10-year transformation road map to drive the delivery of the mission.

Wabote added that the plan sought to increase income to the Gross Domestic Products and facilitation of Nigeria’s goods and services to regional markets.

He also said the country had a vision to achieve 70 per cent value retention within the next 10 years.

“We have sectoral working groups within the Nigerian local content including banking, insurance and others. And these teams of experts within their sectors formulate the strategy with which they engage the board for implementation. The insurance industry should also consolidate on joint partnership or venture with local and international outfits because they can’t do it alone.”

Wabote said that it was mindful of the fact that if every African country in sub-Saharan Africa decided to do local content, and wanted everything to happen in their country, it would become sub-optimal. Part of their strategy, he added, was to encourage sub-regional integration.