Guinea re-strategises for growth

By ROSEMARY ONUOHA
MANAGING Director of Guinea Insurance Plc, Mr. Soji Emiola said the company is putting strategies in place to realise its goal of being among the first ten insurance companies in the country.

To this end, Guinea Insurance is targeting growth of its retail business, capacity development and branch expansion.

At an interactive forum with media men in Lagos, Emiola stated that being at the helm of affairs in Guinea has been very challenging and interesting in the last one year because the company has not been too robust in the last couple of years.

According to him, “I must confess that being the Managing Director of this company has been very challenging and interesting at the same time in terms of the fact that I came from a relatively stable background which is Cornerstone Insurance.

My goal and vision for Guinea Insurance is to make it one of the first ten insurance companies in Nigeria ” The Managing Director said that he is set to present his business plan to the board of the company and will start implementation immediately approval is given, stressing that his areas of target are retail business growth, capacity building and branch expansion.

Emiola said that Guinea will make every effort to engage the brokers effectively because insurance is brokers driven business as they control a significant portion of the market.  On capacity, he said that the company is developing capacity to grow its retail business which is the future of insurance while some branch offices have to be wound down and rebuilt to give it a full-fledged regional structure.

He also stated that the management of the company is developing capacity to play actively in the oil and gas sector and they are bringing in people with knowledge in local content initiative of the federal government to maximise their operations in that sector, adding “Insurance is a knowledge business so we want to attract the right skills into the company to make it one of the first ten in the industry.

As such we are the only company that uses predictive Index (PI) software to identify the right staff because we want to be sure that we have the right people in the right roles.”

“We are developing structures to participate actively in the Market Development and Restructuring Initiative (MDRI) of the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) while restructuring our internal business processes because we want to be known as a company that provides excellent service delivery.”

As part of efforts to adopt the International Financial Reporting Standard, the Guinea Managing Director noted that they have brought in consultants to do assessment of their IT infrastructure, adding “We are working with consultants in the hope that the brand will come out brighter and better and we have laid a solid foundation for performance.”

In terms of being the first ten in the market, Emiola noted that the company is considering profitability because that is what investors are more interested in, stating “Our target of being the first ten is in terms of profitability because investors will be happy with a company that records profit and is able to pay them dividend.”

Reacting to allegations that staff of the company are aggrieved, he said “Because the company has not been doing very well in the last ten years, what you have are people who have nowhere to go. We transfer people to other branches because movement in an organisation is a normal thing.

We have branches across the country, so people will be moved about. Whatever we are doing is in the best interest of staff. There is no way you can embark on a turnaround strategy in a company and not meet opposition.”