#ENDSARS calm protests staged by youths across Nigeria started through various social media platforms, then moved to the street against the activities of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), and Police Brutality.
Last week, unarmed protesters were shot at Lekki toll gate in Lagos. After the ugly incident, hoodlums hijacked the protests all over the state of Nigeria and began to destroy both private and public properties. Banks, shopping malls, ATM Galleries, including BRT buses burnt at terminals and buildings razed down by fire.
The Lagos State governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu in his report, said Lagos state alone would need c.N1 trillion for reconstruction after the destruction caused by the hoodlums.
The massive destruction of both public and private property has established worries on the ability of the insurance sector to cope with the expected number of claims.
According to news reports, many operators expect claims to run into billions of naira which may be overwhelming for the insurance players if the government fails to offer some sort of aid especially as the sector is right in the middle of a recapitalisation exercise. In what may be a reaction to these fears, the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) Insurance Index, a benchmark to measure the performance of the insurance sector closed lower by 0.59% for the week (ended 23-Oct-2020). It is however not too clear how much of the #EndSARS loss incident is covered under the different types of available policies.
The Nigerian Insurance sector remains largely underdeveloped with Insurance penetration still at c.2% and with the sector contributing less than 0.5% to GDP. The sector which contracted by 29.5% in the Q2 GDP report released by the Nigerian Bureau of Staistics is set for a deep recession this year. Yet to recover from the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic which has resulted in an increase in in health, travel and business disruption claims, players will now have to face the impact of the recent destruction of properties across the country on claims amidst trying to meet the new capital requirements set by regulators.
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