Yemisi Izuora
The National Insurance Commission (NAICOM), has said that every step is crucial in determining claimed accomplishment of recapitalization status of insurance companies.
The regulatory Agency has already approved the involvement of four verifiers which include, PricewaterhouseCoopers(PwC) , Ernest and Young, KPMG and Delloite, to verify and provide evidence of every claim of the insurance companies.
The Commissioner for Insurance/CEO (CFI) of NAICOM, Mr. Olusegun Omosehin, confirmed the development in Lagos on Wednesday, during a media engagement.
Omosehin, said the verifiers will critically examine all aspects of claims and ascertain the statutory deposits with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
The Commissioner explained that, ” Statutory deposits is an important criteria in this exercise and any operator who didn’t meet up to this requirement will not be given regulatory nod of compliance. By regulation, statutory deposits translates to 10 per cent of your minimum capital that must be sent to the apex bank.
“So, CBN will be working with NAICOM and the 4 verifying companies to know the true position of these underwriters.”
While insisting that there is no going back on the recapitalisation deadline as stipulated in the NIIRA 2025, the CFI, said the regulator would exercise a major role in ensuring that companies who may not be able to raise the needed funding merge ahead of schedule.
” We will be having a meeting with those struggling to recapitalise amd offer to midwife the marrige among them ro ensure no license lapse at the expiration of the deadline, ” he said.
According to Omosehin: “Recapitalisation is an aspect of guaranteeing the financial soundness of an asset. Interestingly, it happens to be one of the key provisions in the Nigerian Insurance Industry Reform Act (NIIRA) 2025.
“NIIRA actually made provision for a new minimum capital requirement(MCR) plus risk-based capital (RBC). So, the first part of it is just the MCR. That’s what we are enforcing for now, asking entities to move from N2 billion for Life to N10 billion, N3 billion for Non-Life to N15 billion, and for reinsurance to move from N10billion to N35billion.
“So basically, that’s what we are enforcing. The second phase of it is to then look at their portfolio of risk in relation to capital they are holding, which is the risk-based capital.”
Ahead of July 31st recapitalisation deadline for underwriting firms in the country, about 20 insurance companies are now set for capital verification.
The insurers have till 30th of April, 2026 to link every fresh insurance policy to a National Identity Number(NIN).
The companies had earlier approached the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) that they had met up the recapitalisation requirement.
The process, which starts next week, will be concluded in the next three weeks, after which another batch of companies will undergo scrutiny of the regulator.
Omosehin mandated underwriters to reach out to their policyholders and register policies with their respective NIN.
He stated that, the April 30th is sacrosanct, assuring the regulator will not shift this deadline. ” This shouldn’t be a challenge. Virtually, everybody has a NIN. When you want to buy a phone line, you submitted your NIN which is then linked to your SIM. The same thing applies when you want to open an account in the bank. And insurers now want to move in this direction for proper identification and Know-Your-Customer(KYC) requirements, ” he added.