Chairman/CEO, Prestige Insurance Brokers Prince Feyisayo Soyewo

By Ngozi Onyeakusi— The Chairman/Chief Executive Officer, Prestige Insurance Brokers Limited, Prince Feyisayo Soyewo has described insurance brokers as the backbone of insurance business given the roles they play in the business.

Insurance Brokers are universally recognized as insurance intermediaries employed to use their skills and expertise in arranging insurance protection in the very best interest of their clients who are the proposer or consumers.

A Broker is presumed at law to have the necessary knowledge as well as ability to handle all his clients’ insurance problems and to advice the clients correctly and appropriately.

Speaking to SUPERNEWS Nigeria in the light of this in an interview in Lagos, Soyewo is also a former President, Nigerian Council of Registered Insurance Brokers NCRIB, buttressed the fact that without brokers insurance business remained incomplete .
“The business is incomplete. They can’t do without us. We can weld our big stick . You know there are businesses that must naturally come to us. We are in charge of some camps . There was a time we try to deal with underwriters who are anti brokers or after brokers. We are the marketers .Go and employ 1000 marketing staff in your organisation.
The brokers are the marketers. We prove it. Don’t waste your time employing marketers, rely on brokers.
He assured that brokers make job easy for underwriters through education and interpretation of laws for clients .
“We makes job easy for underwriters.
We educate them. Where there are laws, we are there to educate them.
On whether underwriters could do without the services of brokers, Soyewo pointed out that insurers primarily need the brokers for successful business.
“We are doing a lot to support and make things easy for the underwriters.
If anyone says they don’t need us in the market then they are not serious and their dreams will not come true. Insurance is not domestic business its a universal business that need brokers”, he . acclaimed .
Speaking on rate cutting, which today poses threat to the growth of insurance business in the country, Soyewo stated that the menace would l stop if underwriters do the needful.
“Yes I always said that the issue of rate cutting will start and end with underwriters, when they are strict, when there is a tariff on Fire policy for instance, you must not go lower that. If they come to you looking for something lower than that, don’t oblige . If I go to other places and I didn’t get it lower, I will come back . But they want to get the business at all cost that where you see the rate cutting issue.
SUPERNEWS reports that rate cutting is a process whereby a lower premium is accepted from an insurance policyholder than the amount stipulated by the insurance industry regulator, the National insurance Commission NAICOM.
He added that there must be a minimum rate for policies insisting that any departure from such rate must be stated.
“There must be a minimum rate and anything that will make you go below the minimum must be evident there. There must be survey to support it and the management of the organisation must support it. But in a bid to ensure that business does not elude me, underwriters will always go down and brokers will always ask for the lowest rate instead of them to say this is the lowest we can go . So as long as I am concerned rate cutting is not an issues unless the underwriters restrict to their rate cutting manual so that they will stop accusing us”, he said.