CBN Tasks Insurance Industry Over Environmental Risks

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has called on the insurance industry to play a major role in managing and reducing environmental risks, by partnering with governments, individuals and corporate organisations.

The CBN governor, Malam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, who was represented by Mr. Chris Chukwu at the 2011 International Conference of the Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria (CIIN), called on the institute to be committed to working with partners to address key issues such as pollution reduction, the efficient use of resources and climate change.

“We must endeavour to identify realistic and sustainable solutions. We must also apply our skills and techniques of the industry in understanding uncertainties, identifying, quantifying and responding to risks in view of the fact that these strengths are core to the effective management of environmental challenges,” he said.

Sanusi said he was delighted that the insurance industry recognised that economic development needed to be compatible with human welfare and a healthy economic environment, adding that to ignore this fact was to risk increasing social, environmental and financial costs.

The President of CIIN, Mr. Sunny Adeda said the state of infrastructure in the country remained a major challenge to sustainability of economic development and that this had continued to constitute cause for concern for the industry.

Adeda noted that the attendant risks in poor and insufficient infrastructural facilities such as roads, water supply and transportation could not be overemphasised, and, as an industry, “we should begin to champion constructive campaigns for the development of the nation’s infrastructural base.”

He said as an industry, the institute would continue to explore risk improvement measures by means of the technical capacities of its workforce.

“Today, enterprise risk management has become sine-qua-non for both business success and sustainability. Our efforts at ensuring a continually skilled workforce will remain on the front burner of the skills and talent development agenda of this great Institute. This is the only way we can ensure sustainable growth in the insurance sub-sector of our national economy,” he said.