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Chuks Udo Okonta
With a view to strengthening the competencies of employees, over a dozen members of staff at Allianz Nigeria enrolled towards being badged by the Allianz Underwriting Academy. Technical team members at Allianz Nigeria have been admitted into the prestigious Academy in what will be the first phase of a progressive up-skilling program following the integration of the local operating entity into the Group.
Established in 2001, the Allianz Underwriting Academy aims to fast track staff of the global insurance giant – the Allianz Group – towards gaining insurance qualifications. The Academy’s CII prior learning accreditation award made it the first in-house training programme within the insurance industry to achieve this status at Advanced Diploma Level.
The accreditation means that, for the first time, staff passing specific personal lines or commercial (motor, property and casualty) academy modules can earn (up to a maximum of 60) credits within the CII qualification structure. This encourages and enables employees to become qualified and adds value to the internal training programme.
Head of Data Analytics & Reporting at Allianz Nigeria, Adekunle Giwa, who aced all his papers in the first cycle beamed: “The exams were as rigorous as they were rewarding. I am proud to be a student of the Academy and look forward to the accreditation award from the prestigious CII UK.”
The programme provides a framework which enables individuals to build the skills required to fulfil career aspirations, achieve professional qualifications through study support and the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) accreditation and to meet the requirements for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) as required by the CII.
Executive Director, Owolabi Salami, explains that prior to the start of the program, Allianz Nigeria boasted a competent and sound technical team. “Still the exams were rigorous even for my very experienced colleagues. This is proof that the best can be made better. Our risk assessment, pricing and coverage will keep getting better. We are very proud that Allianz is the first insurer to achieve this level of accreditation from the CII. Our clear goal is to have the most technically-skilled underwriters within the industry and this affirms our commitment to achieving this objective”, he emphatically submitted.
The Allianz Group is one of the world’s leading insurers and asset managers with more than 92 million retail and corporate customers. Allianz customers benefit from a broad range of personal and corporate insurance services, ranging from property, life and health insurance to assistance services to credit insurance and global business insurance. Allianz is one of the world’s largest investors, managing around 673 billion euros on behalf of its insurance customers while their asset managers – PIMCO and Allianz Global Investors – manage more than 1.4 trillion euros of third-party assets. In 2018, over 142,000 employees in more than 70 countries achieved total revenues of 131 billion euros and an operating profit of 11.5 billion euros for the Group.
