Between Re-capitalisation and Consumer Confidence: The Missing Links in the Nigerian Insurance Industry’s Quest for Corporate Success

The recent re-capitalisation in the Nigerian Insurance Industry was underscored by the need to build strong companies that will bolster the industry’s capacity to bear risk, deliver quality services to the insuring public and contribute to the country’s economic growth and development. With a population of over 140 million where only a fraction of these have insurance policies the ability of the industry to garner sufficient pool of premium to meet its restoration function and stimulate the economy through short and long term investments is seriously threatened. Given this low and poor market penetration, we argue in this paper that success in the industry can only be achieved if consumer confidence in insurance services is restored. While demonstrating that the special nature of insurance business opens it to ethical abuse, the paper argues that failure to evince higher ethical behaviour from insurance practitioners is due to its devoid of trust. In furtherance of this argument, we proposed an integrated model of ethics-based trust as an effective way of getting the industry out of the present doldrums.