NAN-HE-22
Insurance
By Lucy Nwachukwu
Abuja, Feb. 10, 2017 (NAN)The Managing Director, National Insurance Company (NICON) Plc, Mr Samuel Bayode, has pledged NICON’s commitment to provide insurance coverage for the members of the Quintessential Business Women Association (QBWA).
Bayode said this when the Director-General of the group, Mrs Judith Tanko, visited him on Friday in Abuja.
Bayode, represented by the Executive Director, Technical, NICON, Mr Akinsola Ale, said that NICON would focus at ensuring the provision of insurance cover for the entrepreneurs.
“We are starting with a welfare package to ensure that as the entrepreneur go about their daily activities, whatever accident they suffer and the risk associated with their activities is cushioned.
“We will cushion any of their risk as regarding injury or death arising from their operations so that the dependants they leave behind will not suffer full effect of the demise of the death.
“We want to see how we can also contribute our own quota toward encouraging the micro sector that is not properly structured to have that structure of an organised private operator.
“Because of the present economic forces, we both decided to start small, the death benefit is limited to N500, 000 and permanent decapacitation due to accident also gets the same N500, 000.
“There is a token amount for medical expenses arising from injury, the permanent disability must be as a result of an accident but we do not cover suicide,’’ he said.
Bayode said that the holder was expected to pay a token of N1, 000 annually for a benefit of N500, 000, which according to him “is very cheap’’.
He said that the corporate social responsibility of NICON aligned with that of the group and expressed optimism that the collaboration would be a success.
He further said that NICON would use its national spread, huge asset base technology, experience and expertise to ensure proper coverage to quintessential members spread across the country.
Earlier, the Director-General of the group, Mrs Shimite Bello, said that the essence of the partnership with NICON was to that the unstructured members in the country benefited from insurance processes.
She said, “before now, micro business women did not get anywhere near insurance companies, but now the unstructured, the micro business women are also coming up to insure whatever they have.
“This collaboration is all about the welfare of our members; it is meant for NICON to provide insurance for our members that are spread across the 36 states of the federation.
“In Quintessential, we have what we call, `pepper don rest’ it is an avenue where members are expected to save for their housing, health, life, and for their pension,’’ she said.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Quintessential is a social business group that nurture Nigerian women into becoming top players in agric and solid mineral business.
It was established by Bello, who discovered that Nigeria and Africa have lots of food that are wasting due to improper farming, packaging and branding.
The group has been able to put structures in place to help members source for funds, access market linkages, training and empowering them in their businesses. (NAN)
LCN/GY
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Edited by Grace Yussuf