Nigeria’s NAICOM Issues New Licences to 43 Recapitalised Insurers

Nigeria · FINANCE

Nigeria’s insurance regulator has begun handing new licences to the 43 companies that survived the NAICOM recapitalisation, a year-long clean-up that has already claimed its first casualty and could still cost as many as 15 more firms their licences.

What the regulator announced, and when

The National Insurance Commission (NAICOM), Nigeria’s insurance regulator, said on 2 August 2026 that 43 insurance and reinsurance companies had satisfied the new minimum capital requirements at the close of a twelve-month exercise. It published the full list of compliant firms alongside a public notice dated 31 July 2026, the day the deadline expired. Three days later, on 5 August, the Commission began issuing the new licence certificates.

Recapitalisation is a blunt instrument. The regulator raises the amount of shareholder money a company must hold before it is allowed to sell insurance at all; firms either raise the cash, merge, or lose their licence. The point is solvency — making sure an insurer can still pay claims after a bad year.

Eight further insurers filed evidence of compliance shortly before the deadline and are still being checked. NAICOM said that review would be finished within fourteen days of the 2 August announcement. The Commissioner for Insurance, Olusegun Omosehin, said the new licences signalled the beginning of a new regulatory era, and that the Commission’s next step would be a risk-based capital framework, under which each firm’s required capital is tied to the risks actually on its books.

The new capital floors

The thresholds set by the Nigerian Insurance Industry Reform Act (NIIRA) 2025 are a step change. Life insurers must now hold ₦10 billion (about US$7.3 million), up from ₦2 billion (about US$1.5 million). Non-life carriers need ₦15 billion (about US$11 million), up from ₦3 billion (about US$2.2 million). Composite firms, which write both lines, face ₦25 billion (about US$18 million), up from ₦5 billion (about US$3.7 million). Reinsurers — the companies that insure the insurers — must hold ₦35 billion (about US$26 million), up from ₦10 billion (about US$7.3 million). Naira figures are converted at the official rate of about ₦1,368 to the dollar quoted by the Central Bank of Nigeria on 4 August 2026.

Every licensed firm must also keep a capital adequacy ratio of at least 100 percent, meaning available capital must fully cover the regulatory minimum rather than merely approach it. NAICOM engaged the four largest global audit firms — KPMG, Deloitte, EY and PwC — to verify the capital positions and admissible assets that companies submitted, a step the regulator said was meant to make the outcome defensible.

Who cleared the bar

The published register breaks down as 23 non-life insurers, 10 life insurers, 8 composite firms and 2 reinsurers. Multiplied by the relevant thresholds, that produces a combined regulatory capital floor of ₦715 billion (about US$520 million) across the surviving market, a figure computed by the Nigerian financial data firm Proshare from NAICOM’s own list.

Among the non-life names are Zenith General Insurance, Custodian and Allied Insurance, NEM Insurance, Heirs General Insurance, Consolidated Hallmark, Linkage Assurance, Coronation Insurance and Prestige Assurance. On the life side, Custodian Life, CHI Life, Heirs Life, Prudential Zenith Life, Stanbic IBTC Insurance and Mutual Benefits Life are on the list. The composite group is led by Leadway Assurance, the market’s largest underwriter, alongside AIICO, Cornerstone, AXA Mansard, LASACO, Industrial and General Insurance and Great Nigeria Insurance. Only two reinsurers cleared: Continental Reinsurance Plc and FBS Reinsurance Limited.

Several of the survivors are the local arms of foreign groups. Prudential Zenith Life is tied to Prudential plc of the United Kingdom; Sanlam-Allianz’s Nigerian life and general companies to Sanlam of South Africa and Allianz of Germany; Stanbic IBTC Insurance to South Africa’s Standard Bank; and Sunu Assurances Nigeria to the pan-African SUNU Group. A foreign parent made the capital call easier to answer.

Who did not, and the first liquidation

Nigeria went into the exercise with roughly 58 licensed insurance and reinsurance operators. With 43 cleared and eight still under review, at least seven neither met the threshold nor filed for late verification. The Guardian (Nigeria) reports that around ten firms have yet to receive a clean bill of health. If none of the eight under review passes, as many as 15 licences could be withdrawn.

The regulator has already acted once. NAICOM revoked the certificate of registration of Nigeria Reinsurance Corporation for failing to meet the reinsurance threshold and appointed Muiz Banire, a senior advocate of Nigeria, as receiver and provisional liquidator with effect from 3 August 2026. Banire said the company’s bank accounts had been frozen immediately while assets and liabilities are traced. It is the clearest signal so far that the deadline was not symbolic.

What follows is likely to be a wave of mergers, sales and run-offs, and possibly litigation from firms that dispute how their assets were valued. Nigerian insurers spent the past year raising rights issues and courting strategic investors; the ones that could not are now negotiating from a much weaker position.

Why this attempt worked when earlier ones failed

NAICOM has tried this before and lost. A tier-based solvency capital policy introduced in 2018 was withdrawn after shareholders sued. A second push, aimed at deadlines in 2020 and 2021, was suspended after further court action. In July 2022 the Federal High Court in Lagos held that the Commission could not raise minimum solvency capital by circular at all: only the National Assembly, by amending the law, could do that.

That ruling is why this round took a legislative route. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signed NIIRA 2025 into law on 31 July 2025, repealing the Insurance Act 2003 and a set of older insurance statutes and writing the new capital figures into primary legislation. A firm that wants to challenge the thresholds now has to challenge an act of parliament rather than a regulator’s circular.

NAICOM frames the exercise as part of the Tinubu government’s stated goal of a US$1 trillion economy by 2030. The underlying problem it is trying to solve is small: insurance premiums are worth less than 1 percent of Nigeria’s output, and by some measures around 0.6 percent, one of the lowest rates in the world. South Africa’s figure is above 10 percent. Fewer, better-capitalised insurers are meant to be a precondition for raising that number, not a substitute for it.

Why foreign investors should care

For decades Nigerian insurers passed most large oil, gas, aviation, marine and infrastructure risks to reinsurers abroad, because they lacked the balance sheet to hold them. That sends premium income — and foreign currency — out of the country, and it means the terms of cover for major Nigerian projects are set in London or Johannesburg. A better-capitalised local market can keep a larger share of those risks at home.

That matters for anyone financing or building in Nigeria. As the country courts Chinese, European and Gulf money for rail, ports, power and telecoms, the question of who may lawfully carry the risk on a project, and under whose law a claim is settled, becomes a practical constraint on which contractors and lenders can take part. It is one of the quieter ways states reassert control over strategic infrastructure, a theme explored in our pillar Africa: The New Scramble.

The caveat is that a threshold set in naira is not a fixed measure of strength. Nigerian inflation and a weaker currency erode the real value of ₦10 billion or ₦35 billion year by year, and a firm that scrapes past a nominal number is not automatically able to settle a large dollar-denominated claim.

What to watch next

The immediate test is the eight firms still under verification, with a decision due around the middle of August. How openly NAICOM handles borderline cases, and whether it names the companies that failed, will shape how credible the exercise looks from outside.

The second is the regulator itself. On 21 July 2026 the Senate passed the Insurance Regulatory Commission (Establishment) Bill, which would rename NAICOM the Insurance Regulatory Commission and give it greater independence, stronger enforcement powers and clearer authority to work with foreign regulators. The committee report was presented by Senator Adetokunbo Abiru, who chairs the Senate committee on banking, insurance and other financial institutions. A bill passed by one chamber is not yet law: it must also clear the House of Representatives and receive presidential assent.

The third is what happens to the customers of firms that fail. In April 2026 NAICOM issued guidelines for an Insurance Policyholders’ Protection Fund, financed by a mandatory levy on insurers, and the fund’s oversight committee was inaugurated on 15 May 2026. It is designed to meet claims if an insurer collapses — a safety net whose first real test may not be far off.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

• NAICOM press release, 2 August 2026
• NAICOM list of compliant companies (PDF)
• Punch: NAICOM clears 43 insurers, reviews eight
• The Guardian (Nigeria): 10 insurers risk liquidation
• Punch: NAICOM revokes Nigeria Reinsurance licence
• Channels TV: Senate passes bill to rename NAICOM
• Vanguard: naira/dollar rate, 4 August 2026

This article was produced by The Rio Times’ automated newsroom system. How we use AI · Report an error

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