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AIICO Deepens Bonds with Retirees, Holds Annuity Forum in Lagos, Extends to Port Harcourt

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AIICO Insurance Plc, Nigeria’s leading composite insurer, today hosted another successful edition of its Annuity Forum, a yearly engagement platform designed to strengthen ties with its annuity customers, listen to their feedback, and create opportunities for meaningful interaction.

This year marks a significant expansion of the Forum. For the first time since its inception, the event, traditionally held only in Lagos, is spreading its reach to other regions of the country. The Lagos edition sets the pace, with another scheduled to hold in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, targeting annuity customers in the South-South region.

The atmosphere at the Lagos event was lively and refreshing, with customers treated to a mix of business and leisure – including health checks, entertainment, quizzes, and refreshments, alongside constructive conversations on enhancing customer experience.

Speaking at the event, satisfied annuitants expressed their gratitude to AIICO for creating a platform that fosters connection and trust.

His Royal Majesty Oba Ogungbayi Akanni Wasiu, the Onitetiku & Oluowode of Ota, Ogun State, and a retired officer from the Ministry of Education, is one of AIICO’s delighted annuity customers who attended the event. Sharing his experience, he said: “I retired 15 years ago and started my annuity immediately after retirement. I have no regrets because AIICO has paid me every month without fail. I strongly recommend AIICO to anyone preparing for retirement because the company has been very consistent.

Mrs. Judith Chibuogwu, who retired as a Director of Nursing from Lagos University Teaching Hospital, began her annuity with AIICO earlier this year in March. Sharing her experience, she said: “It’s been wonderful. I took the advice to take on annuity with AIICO, and it has been an amazing experience with the steady, constant payments. Today’s event has also been very enlightening, especially the conversations around retirement life, health, and wellbeing. In fact, I’ve already started talking to my former colleagues who are still in service about AIICO’s annuity.”

The MD/CEO of AIICO Insurance Plc, Mr. Babatunde Fajemirokun, while welcoming the annuitants stated “This annual gathering is not just a meeting – it is a celebration of your achievements, resilience and the trust you have placed in us as your partner on life’s journey. You are not just clients – you are family. This forum is an opportunity to strengthen our bond, share updates on our industry and re-affirm the promises we have made to you.”

He addressed head-on the negative claims circulating online about the alleged mismanagement of annuity funds, stating “AIICO Insurance ensures that your funds are kept with pension fund custodians – that means there’s no individual within the AIICO team that has access to your funds. This is the case with all insurance companies in the annuity business. – the funds are professionally managed in line with strict regulatory guidelines that have been provided”.

Mr. Gbenga Ilori, Executive Director, Retail Business Division, echoed the sentiment:

“Our business exists because of our customers, and we believe it is important to create avenues for physical interaction and engagement. These forums give us the opportunity to listen, respond to their questions, and hear their ideas on how we can serve them better. They have entrusted their pensions to us, and we consider it a sacred duty to always stay connected to them.

More and more people are placing their trust in AIICO for their annuity needs — today, we serve over 25,000 annuitants across the country, and the number keeps growing. This is why we are taking the forum beyond Lagos, with the South-South region as our next stop in a few weeks.”

With a large and growing number of annuitants nationwide and monthly disbursements of over N1.7 billion, AIICO Insurance has built a reputation as a leading player in Nigeria’s annuity market. The company continues to back this leadership position with unmatched customer service, strong financial performance, and innovative engagement platforms like the Annuity Forum.

The journey continues in Port Harcourt, where AIICO will bring the Annuity Forum experience to annuitants in the South-South. This marks the beginning of a broader mission to take the Forum across Nigeria’s geopolitical zones over time, ensuring that retirees everywhere can share in the warmth, interaction, and assurance that define our commitment. For AIICO, every retiree deserves not just timely income, but also a community that celebrates and supports them throughout their retirement journey.

About AIICO Insurance Plc

AIICO Insurance is a leading composite insurer in Nigeria, with a 60-year record of accomplishment in delivering quality service to its clients. Founded in 1963, AIICO provides life and general insurance, health insurance, and investment management services to create and protect wealth for individuals, families, and corporate customers.

   

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This is not a story about a reluctant investor. It is a story about capital that wants to move, cannot find enough places willing and able to receive it in a form it can underwrite, and quietly waits instead. Multiply that fund by the hundreds of pension schemes, sovereign wealth vehicles, commercial banks and infrastructure funds now carrying dedicated allocations for emerging-market infrastructure, and a pattern emerges that rarely makes it into a headline: the world is not short of capital for infrastructure. It has capital in historic abundance, sitting adjacent to a historic infrastructure gap, unable to cross the distance between the two. The Comfortable Explanation  The explanation on offer at every major infrastructure summit is a familiar one. Global infrastructure investment needs run into the tens of trillions of dollars over the coming decade; committed capital falls well short; therefore, the problem is one of insufficient funding, and the solution is more of it: more pledges, more blended-finance facilities, more climate funds, more multilateral capital increases. It is a comfortable explanation because it assigns responsibility clearly to governments who under-fund, institutions who under-commit, and it offers a clean remedy: raise more. 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Where the Conversion Breaks  The break does not happen at the ends of the process. It happens in the middle, in the unglamorous sequence of work that turns a plausible concept into an instrument a fiduciary can sign. A promising transmission project needs a feasibility study rigorous enough to survive institutional scrutiny rather than optimistic enough to attract early interest. It needs offtake arrangements that hold up under real counterparty and currency risk, not the counterparty risk assumed in a base case. It needs environmental and social documentation calibrated to the standards of the institutions being asked to fund it, not the standards of the jurisdiction hosting it. It needs a legal and commercial structure that allocates risk in ways a commercial lender, not only a development financier, will accept. It needs a sponsor capable of executing what has been proposed, not merely capable of proposing it. 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