LAGOS - Nigeria: Firm Introduces Online Car Insurance Scheme

Topcheck, an online service that lets its users compare prices of insurance and buy them, has formally launched operations in Nigeria, with focus on car insurance.
The service acts as an aggregator of insurance covers offered by insurance companies in the country. It lists the benefits of each cover, and assists users in determining which the best option is, based on their financial capabilities or personal preferences.

Speaking during the launch in Lagos, TopCheck’s Co-founder and Managing Director, Thomas Von Pilar, said the company introduced the service car in a bid to make it available to millions of internet users, in an easy and convenient fashion.

“You can buy insurance from the comfort of your home or office within ten minutes,” he said. “We want to help people get insurance and help protect them,” he added.

Although, traditionally, insurance is not widely popular in the country, Von Pilar believes that “there are lots of efforts in the industry to strengthen insurance as a product and make it much more effective for the customer.”

The site currently lists six insurance companies – NEM Insurance Plc, Custodian and Allied Insurance Plc, Old Mutual Insurance Plc, Cornerstone Insurance Plc, Law Union Rock Car Insurance and Industrial and General Insurance Plc – but Von Pilar said more companies will be added.

“We only list the best players in the industry,” he pointed out, “and we are entirely independent.”

“In Topcheck, we educate and inform people on the internet with our platform. We make it easy for people to understand what insurance is and what it does for the customers and we promote the factors on how insurance grow in the future,” another Managing Director and co-founder, Christian Wiesner, said.

While highlighting some of the challenges facing the company, Wiesner said the challenges are related to infrastructure and bureaucracy. He mentioned that other challenges are peculiar to the nature of the business.

He also disclosed that the company is working towards becoming the largest insurance comparism platform in Nigeria as well as on the African continent, while becoming a major player in all other financial service.

Source: THISDAYLIVE