The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Consolidated Hallmark Insurance, Mrs Mary Adeyanju, has said that the capital raised through the recently concluded recapitalisation exercise cannot solve the Nigerian insurance industry’s most fundamental problem, which she identified as public distrust.
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She spoke in an interview with Nairametrics published on 11 September 2026, in which she addressed the industry’s low contribution to national output, the effect of recapitalisation, her company’s recent earnings and the acquisition of NSIA Insurance’s life portfolio.
National Bureau of Statistics data analysed by the publication show that within the finance and insurance sector, banking accounted for 87.22 per cent of total output in the second quarter of 2026, while the insurance subsector trailed at 12.78 per cent.
In real terms, the sector contributed 3.37 per cent to GDP in the second quarter of 2026, with insurance itself contributing less than one per cent. The sector had earlier recorded a real GDP contribution of 2.56 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2025, an improvement of 0.10 percentage points on the 2.46 per cent recorded in the same period of 2024.
Operators raised a combined ₦700 billion through the recapitalisation exercise.
Asked how Nigerians perceive insurance, Adeyanju said the product is not regarded as a necessity.
“Nigerians see insurance not as a product that they need. Nigerians see insurance like a scare. But actually, insurance is the product that not just Nigerians, but everybody in the world needs,” she said.
She said the industry has failed to communicate value. “Insurance is a product that I tell people you don’t feel until you have a claim. So it is not sold. It is bought.”
She explained the reasoning. “If you keep paying your insurance premiums year in, year out, and you have not suffered any loss, you really cannot test the efficacy or the efficiency of what you have bought until you suffer a loss.”
Her company, she said, is targeting individuals and small businesses rather than only corporate buyers. “The capacity to rebuild after a loss occurs, they are the ones that really don’t have it. So we’re looking at SME products, little products that we can sell that will get across to those people.”
She also identified a design failure in the industry’s approach. “Most of the time people are not buying because we’re selling what we are offering. But the big question is, what’s your offering? Is that what the people really need?”
On distribution, she pointed to partnerships as the route to scale, including super agents and bancassurance arrangements, alongside embedded products and technology.
Adeyanju listed the constraints facing operators, stressing that they are industry-wide rather than peculiar to her company.
“The number one is the trust issue, which everybody knows. A lot of people don’t trust insurance, or they think insurance is a fraud, and sadly so,” she said.
She attributed it to past claims experiences. “Some people have actually had dealings with insurance companies and their experiences were not that pleasant. And so they have formed an opinion, and that opinion they have shared with other people. And you know, bad news travels fast.”
The second, capacity, she said had been addressed by recapitalisation, which should allow the market to retain more business.
The third is technology. “If you compare us in the financial services sector, insurance seems to be the last when it comes to the use of technology,” she said, expressing the hope that the new capital would fund investment in that area.
The fourth is people. “The industry has not been able to attract the right kind of people, because within the financial services ecosystem we are the least paid as well. If you pay more, you’re going to be able to attract the best hands.”
Put to her that the interviewer had personally been left unpaid six years after a five-year life policy matured with another company, Adeyanju apologised and pointed to the available remedies.
“There’s always that one bad egg. Unfortunately, you dealt with the wrong one. That is not to say that insurance companies don’t pay claims,” she said. “We pay claims, huge claims, and we will continue to pay claims, because insurance companies are established to carry risk and pay claims where they crystallise.”
She directed aggrieved policyholders to the Nigerian Insurers Association, which she described as a coordinating body rather than a regulator, and to the National Insurance Commission.
“NAICOM is also very up on customer protection. It’s one of the strategic key pillars of this NAICOM of today, and insurance companies have been made to contribute to that consumer protection fund, seriously from our premium, to ensure that consumers or customers are protected,” she said.
Asked what she foresees after recapitalisation, Adeyanju said technology investment is now existential.
“Every business of today should be a technology business that is doing something. It should be a technology business that is selling insurance, a technology business that is selling banking, or else you’re dead in one, two years,” she said.
She cited a claims tool her company uses for motor business, under which inspection is carried out by the customer through the application, and a claim can be submitted with photographs without a police report.
“There are even prices of all of those items in the market already input and updated monthly, either upgraded or downgraded based on current market price. So it will do an adjustment, send you an offer immediately, and then we’ll credit your account. That is what technology can do,” she said.
She said the capital would also fund recruitment and operational efficiency, and should create jobs, since technology infrastructure still requires people to manage it.
Consolidated Hallmark Holdings Plc reported profit before tax of ₦27.10 billion for the six months ended 30 June 2026, against ₦1.76 billion in the corresponding period of 2025, an increase of 1,436 per cent.
Adeyanju was candid about the source.
“About 80 per cent of it is a fair value gain from the capital market,” she said. “We were favoured to have invested in some particular stocks that really went up.”
She said the company also recorded operational profit. “Operationally, we’re also not running at a loss.”
She attributed a slowdown in underwriting activity to the recapitalisation period itself. “A lot of clients were trimming their transactions and waiting to see which insurance company was going to recapitalise. So we’re going through what I call the recovery period.”
Asked about a share price gain of more than 60 per cent over the past year, Adeyanju said she had expected it.
“The recapitalisation exercise generally for the industry has brought more investors’ confidence into the insurance space. If you look at the insurance companies that raised money, all of them were oversubscribed,” she said.
She also credited the group structure adopted in 2024, under which the original insurance company has since produced a finance house, an HMO, a microlife insurance company that has recently been sold, and a life company.
“The group structure also sends a lot of reassurance to investors, because it creates a lot of value that comes with the group,” she said.
Asked how difficult it was to meet the capital requirement, Adeyanju said the company did not go to the market.
“We didn’t raise any capital, we already had the money,” she said.
As at the 31 December 2025 audit date for recapitalisation purposes, she said, the company held ₦32 billion against a requirement of ₦15 billion. Its life subsidiary, in which it holds 98.2 per cent, held ₦10.2 billion against a requirement of ₦10 billion.
“It’s really what to do with the capital, how to take advantage of the capital. Those are the things that we’re working very hard at,” she said.
On the transfer of NSIA Insurance’s entire life portfolio to the group’s life company, Adeyanju described it as one of the opportunities thrown up by the exercise.
“Some companies would have to download because they don’t have the capacity to capitalise both companies. Some companies even have the capacity but probably want to throw all their muscle into their area of strength,” she said.
“An opportunity came up and our life company had to buy over their life portfolio because they want to focus on their general business. That transaction has been concluded. We have gotten approval in principle from NAICOM.”
She said the acquisition delivered immediate value to a new life company in the form of clients and premium.
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