The Lagos Business School Sustainability Centre led the convening of the 2023 Chief Executive Forum on Sustainability Business themed ‘Leveraging ESG Governance and Priorities in the Insurance Sector.’ It is a high-level knowledge sharing platform for business leaders to learn and deliberate on sector-specific sustainability issues, and this year’s spotlight was on the insurance services sector.
The event took place on Thursday, November 2, 2023, at the prestigious Lagos Oriental Hotel in Victoria Island, Lagos.
In his opening remarks the Dean, Lagos Business School, Prof Chris Ogbechie, welcomed the C-suites and laid out the forum road map and objectives. He implored the insurers to see Sustainability and ESG as an opportunity and not a cost item, calling on them to leverage the insights and best case practises the forum will provide. He added that the “Lagos Business School, through the LBS Sustainability Centre, is committed to supporting the private sector in their sustainability journey and the Chief Executive Forum serves as a platform to extend this support to the insurance sector, fostering collaboration and knowledge sharing among industry leaders”.
The keynote presentation titled ‘Opportunities for Growth in ESG Finance and Risk Management’ was delivered by Mrs Tomi Adepoju, Partner and Head, Enterprise Risk and ESG Service, KPMG West Africa. She pointed out the unique opportunities for growth in market share, sales volume and profitability for insurers if they understand and mainstream Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles in their business strategy. She highlighted business cases across the globe which have become success stories of insurers leveraging creativity and innovation in the design of their policies, premiums, and products, adding that incentivising policy holders to make green choices helps to curb risks that hold great danger to the environment and the society.
She said, “when we craft our ESG strategies as insurers, we need to embed ESG into our corporate strategy and then retool our business models to ensure it is ESG focused. How do we ensure we have strong governance via diversity in boards and management. How do we embed risk management within our risk management framework? We need to look at product innovation to optimise ESG into our products and services to encourage risk reduction for policyholders. We can do this through gamification, apps and data, so policyholders are incentivised to make green choices and pay lower premiums.”
