UNDP GAIN mission pays visit to Nigeria

After a whirlwind fact-finding mission to Nigeria with more than 40 meetings packed tightly into 11 days, Milliman's Ong Xie returned to her office with high hopes for what could be accomplished in the African nation.

“There is so much potential there,” says Ong Xie. “It’s an incredible opportunity.” 

The opportunity is to develop Nigeria as a haven for actuaries, something that is currently not the case despite a population over 200 million and more than 50 insurance companies.

That was the reason Ong Xie traveled there recently along with Milliman’s MicroInsurance Centre managing director, Michael McCord, as part of the firm’s partnership with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), which is known as the UNDP-Milliman Global Actuarial Initiative (GAIN).

The collaboration has a mission of contributing to the growth of actuarial expertise and helping countries and the insurance industry to better manage the increasing risks faced by people and enterprises in developing countries.

Ong Xie, a Singapore-based consulting actuary who is serving as a program manager for the UNDP GAIN initiative, said it didn’t take much convincing for her to get involved in the project.

“When this opportunity came about to do something for my own profession, I was all in,” she says. “I feel very strongly about it.” 

Once the Milliman duo landed in Lagos, which is the most populous city in all of Africa and the economic center of Nigeria, there was not a lot of time for sightseeing. There were meetings with university graduates, members of the Nigerian Actuarial Society, plus sessions with regulators, insurance companies, re-insurers, and members of the pension industry.  

“We spoke to almost everyone,” Ong Xie says. “The purpose of the trip was to look at the supply of actuaries in Nigeria and the demand. Who needs them and where do they come from? We found that there are only 19 fellows and eight associates in the entire country. There are at least 56 insurance companies that need actuaries. That’s a big gap.” 

Ong Xie says one of the pain points in Nigeria is that actuarial science is a default program in the universities and if a student isn’t accepted into accounting or engineering, they get thrust into actuarial science without understanding what it is.

“Only a semester in, they realize it’s a math degree,” Ong Xie says. “Some students stay in it anyway, but as a result of this situation, there’s not much interest, because it was not what they wanted to study.” 

Also, some Nigerian insurance companies aren’t quite sure about the proper role of an actuary.  

“Actuaries can help you make sense of data and give business insights,” Ong Xie says. “That part is missing in Nigeria, where actuaries are seen as just being there to calculate reserves and statutory requirements and that’s it.  

“So a lot of our work moving forward will be about bringing awareness to university students and senior management of insurance companies about the value actuaries bring and how they can use actuaries to their best potential.”

The goals are lofty. Ong Xie says the Milliman initiative would like to see Nigeria grow, within the next 10 years, from 19 fellows to 65 and from eight associates to 120. The regulator has already released a guideline that mandates all insurance companies in Nigeria have to have an in-house actuarial presence, so the need is even more pressing.

By the end of the trip, Ong Xie and Michael achieved buy-in from a good percentage of stakeholders and were confident that the roadmap to success was achievable.

“It was enlightening,” Ong Xie says. “The whole time, people were very warm and welcoming. They realize that we can help and they see, like we do, a great future for actuaries in Nigeria.”