40th anniversary: LASACO targets hospitality, real estate

Lasaco Assurance Plc which is now 40 years old has a future plan to go into hospitality and property business. These will help the company increase its profit and perform its obligations to investors.
Mr. Segun Balogun, the Managing Director revealed this to journalists during a press conference recently. Right now, volume of investment of LSACO in real estate is N3.3 billion
According to the MD: “We have discovered that for companies outside of Nigeria that are making good returns, it is not only via insurance that they make income, but also by what they divert or direct the money that makes good returns for them.
“They diversify into some other sectors of the economy to augment the income that is being made from an insurance business. “For a couple of years, you will see Lasaco being a major player in the hospitality and the real estate industry and one thing that is very common now is digitalisation because it is a thing that makes companies succeed. ”
He seized the opportunity of the press conference to speak on the issue of fake insurance. In his words: “There will be more focus on fake motor insurance as it is rampant in Nigeria and has given the country and the industry a bad name.”
He responded also on the plans of LASACO to recapitalize: “For us at Lasaco, what we have done concerning recapitalization is to reconstruct our shares. We currently have over seven billion units of shares that have been sold to over 37, 000 Nigerians at 50 kobos. And we said to achieve recapitalisation plan, reconstruct the shares to the extent that the number of shares that have been issued becomes less.
“After the reconstruction, we also need to increase the unit of shares we have. Like I said we have 10 billion shares which are going to be reduced to over two billion and we also said that we need to increase the authorized share capital from 10 billion units to 20 billion units. The MD also disclosed that the Corporate Affair Commission, CAC, has given the company certification to increase the authorized share capital from 10 billion units to 20 billion units.
“What this means is that we have almost 18 billion units of shares to issue because from the old one of 10 billion what we have issued is slightly above two billion.”
He added: “The top fifty shareholders of Lasaco control about 70 percent of the shareholding and we have a top ten controlling almost 60 percent. What we have done is to engage these top shareholders about our plans.
“Also, we are going to offer rights and private placement because they are individuals and companies that have been showing interest to buy into the shares of Lasaco.”