LemFi, a remittance startup, has acquired Bureau Buttercrane, the Irish currency exchange platform.

In a statement on Wednesday, LemFi announced that it had obtained regulatory approval from the Central Bank of Ireland to acquire Bureau Buttercrane.

The deal will enable Lemfi to use its Irish licence to operate across the European Economic Area (EEA) and unlock new growth opportunities.

Ridwan Olalere, chief executive officer (CEO), Lemfi, said the acquisition was driven by the need to secure the right regulatory framework for the company’s expansion in Europe.

“Rather than focusing on [Buttercane’s] tech stack or profitability, the acquisition was driven by our need to secure the right regulatory framework for our expansion,” Olalere said.

“We already have the technology; this was a strategic acquisition to ensure smooth and compliant operations across Europe.

“Europe is a big, complicated market with different payment methods, rules, and preferences across countries. We’re optimistic about growth, but it’s a challenging landscape.”

The acquisition comes almost three weeks after Lemfi secured $53 million in a Series B funding round to expand its operations to new countries.

Last year, the company expanded its international payment services to Brazil and Mexico.

The insurance sector in the third quarter 2024, posted Gross Premium written of N1.173 trillion against N1.003 trillion gross premium it posted in 2023.

Similarly, the sector grew its assets to N3.388 trillion against N2.7 trillion assets growth in 2023. With these achievements, the sector successfully sustained its growth trajectory at 60.9 per cent year-on-year and 44.3 per cent on a quarter-on-quarter basis.

This is contained in the latest publication of the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) on the industry’s performance tagged, “Bulletin of the Insurance Market Performance Q3 2024.”

NAICOM in the publication said the insurance sector showed resilience amid macro-economic challenges.

The commission said the N1.173.1billion gross written premium was a remarkable occasion attributable to the consistent deepening policy of the commission and market resilience.

According to the commission, the performance was majorly led by the non-life sector, which recorded  a market share of 68.9 per cent for a total volume of N808.4billion while the life segment accounted for 31.1 per cent of the market premium aggregate.

The industry statistics reveals that the market has achieved a substantial higher rate of growth compared to the national output (GDP) which grew at 3.5 per cent during the period under review, signifying its impressive performance and potential propensity.

The Non-Life segment maintained its dominance, accounting for 68.9 per cent of the total premium generated during the period, closely aligning with its 69.1 percent share in the previous quarter.

Within this segment, the report said the Oil & Gas portfolio led with a 35.2 per cent contribution, followed by Fire Insurance at 21.3 per cent, Motor Insurance also accounted for 14.4 per cent while Marine & Aviation, General Accident, and Miscellaneous contributed 12.4 percent, 9.0 per cent and 7.5 per cent respectively.

According to the report, the life business on the other hand contributed 31.1 per cent of the total premium, gradually increasing its proportional share of the industry’s gross premium.

“Analysis of the Life Insurance segment also shows that, Annuity business accounted for 31.8 percent of the total gross premium, while Individual Life business led with about 41.8 percent contribution of all the life insurance premiums during the quarter,” the report said.

The report said notwithstanding the experiments within the financial services sector, underwriters exhibited undoubted certainty and confidence, as reflected in the robust retention levels across the market.

On claims payment, the report maintained that the improvements in claims management of the industry has served as driver for expansion in gross claims reported in Q3 2024, reaching N564.1 billion which is representative of about 48.1 per cent of the total premiums generated during the period.

Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has directed the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) to debit the settlement accounts of commercial banks that receive fraud proceeds.

This is in an effort to curb fraud in the financial services sector,

So starting this month, CBN instructed the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System to deduct from the accounts of any commercial bank that ends up with fraudulent proceeds.

NIBSS, incorporated in 1993, owned by all licensed banks including the Central Bank of Nigeria and it clearing house, handling inter-bank payments in order to remove potential bottlenecks associated with inter-bank funds transfer and settlement.

According to the CBN, if a bank doesn’t catch a fraudulent transaction or if they can’t prove they did their due diligence, they will get charged.

This is meant to push banks to step up their fraud detection game and is heavily leaning on the whole Know Your Customer (KYC) thing, which we all know is crucial for keeping the system secure.