KEY POINTS
- NAICOM Commissioner Olusegun Omosehin urged Nigerian insurers to shift from product-centric to customer-centric business models.
- The commissioner said the new approach should pull customers into product design, making pricing more acceptable and trust easier to win.
- Omosehin spoke at the opening of Insurance Week 2026, framing public awareness as a core strategic priority.
NAICOM Commissioner for Insurance Olusegun Ayo Omosehin on Monday urged Nigerian insurance underwriters to abandon product-centric thinking and rebuild their portfolios around what customers actually want, framing the shift as essential to lifting trust, pricing acceptability and ownership across the industry.
Omosehin made the call at the opening ceremony of Insurance Week 2026, telling industry leaders that the customer-centric model requires active client involvement in product development, with insurers seeking feedback, mapping expectations and designing solutions that solve real-life problems.
Now the commissioner’s intervention places customer experience at the center of Nigerian insurance reform, with the National Insurance Commission framing public understanding as the foundation for the sector’s growth ambitions.
Customers in the design room
Specifically, Omosehin said products become more relevant and accessible when insurers involve clients from the design stage rather than presenting finished templates and expecting the market to absorb them.
“Products become more relevant and accessible, pricing structures have become more acceptable, and, most importantly, trust and ownership are significantly enhanced,” he said.
Indeed, the commissioner’s framing aligns with what global insurance regulators increasingly demand of underwriters, with usage-based motor cover, parametric agriculture insurance and bite-sized retail covers driving growth in markets such as Kenya, South Africa and India.
Insurance Week as listening forum
Moreover, Omosehin said Insurance Week has progressively evolved into a vital platform for engagement, reflection and constructive feedback inside Nigeria’s insurance industry. He called it far more than a ceremonial occasion.
“The array of activities outlined for this year demonstrates the industry’s clear intent to engage more closely with the market, listen to the voices of customers, and foster stronger relationships with all stakeholders,” Omosehin said.
Furthermore, he framed the week as a chance to assess progress, confront persistent challenges and renew the industry’s collective commitment to building a resilient, inclusive and trusted insurance ecosystem.
Public awareness as priority
Additionally, Omosehin said NAICOM treats public awareness as a core strategic priority rather than a peripheral activity, citing public understanding, trust and acceptance as fundamental anchors of insurance success in any economy.
The framing positions NAICOM’s regulatory posture as one that increasingly recognizes the demand side of the market, not just the prudential and solvency rules that have historically dominated Nigerian insurance regulation.
Meanwhile, the commissioner’s pitch lands amid persistent low insurance penetration in Nigeria, with industry data suggesting that fewer than one in three Nigerians hold any insurance product despite the country’s population size and the recent expansion of mandatory cover requirements.
However, the customer-centric shift will require insurers to invest in data analytics, customer-research capacity and product-design teams that many underwriters have not historically prioritized. The cost-benefit math will favor large players first.
Together with NAICOM’s recapitalization push and the broader push to digitize claims handling, the customer-centric agenda completes a regulatory framework that asks insurers to compete on both balance-sheet strength and product relevance.
Whether the call translates into measurable changes in product mix and penetration rates will depend on how aggressively NAICOM monitors compliance and how quickly insurers absorb the cost of redesigning portfolios. Yet for now, Omosehin has put the customer at the center of Nigerian insurance’s next chapter, with the next move resting on whether the underwriters listen as actively as the regulator wants.
