Kathmandu. While the Curriculum Development Center has been making historic preparations to include insurance education in the school level curriculum since 2084 BS, life insurance companies have become the link to its successful implementation.
Issuing a circular last August, the Insurance Authority (NEA) has directed to conduct at least one awareness programme in each school at the local level while conducting the insurance awareness programme as part of its corporate social responsibility. The challenge is for insurers to rise above business and act as a social campaign to not only comply with the directives of the regulator but also to make the future children understand the importance of insurance.
Currently, most of the life insurance companies are conducting awareness programs at the school level. Most of them focus on formal speeches or insurance policy promotions. They are distributing publicity materials to students about the benefits of insurance, distributing prizes by writing essays and oratories, and promoting schemes such as child education insurance at parents’ gatherings.
Insurers need to change their style to attract future generations to insurance and encourage them to embrace it as a way of life. Through games and stories, the use of games, comics, and cartoons should be adopted to explain insurance as a safety umbrella to protect against risk rather than complex economic issues.
By creating hypothetical risks in the classroom, demonstrating how the uninsured and the uninsured solve the problem, it will help children understand quickly and unforgettable.
Today’s children are technology-savvy. It is easy to explain to them through mobile games or animated videos related to insurance. In Nepal, children’s clubs have brought a big revolution in sanitation, child rights, child education, against child marriage, vaccination, health awareness. The same structure can also be used for insurance awareness.
When a child reaches home and says, “Dad, today I learned how insurance pays in times of distress in school,” it has a greater impact on the parents’ minds than any advertisement. They have to listen carefully. It is also easier to convince parents that insurance is really important when the child presents emotionally.
By training members of children’s clubs as insurance ambassadors, they can easily reach out to their neighborhoods and families. Adding insurance to the plays or street plays of children’s clubs also sends a positive message to the adults in the community.
When these conscious children of today become adults tomorrow, they will not be under pressure from anyone but will understand their needs and will automatically insure.
Therefore, it is time for life insurance companies to look at schools not only as a place to promote business to future generations, but also as a center to lay the foundation for financial literacy.
