Hollard empowers student entrepreneurs with entrepreneurial skills

Hollard Ghana Holdings Limited, an insurance firm, has organised its maiden Tertiary Entrepreneurship Summit at the University of Ghana Business School, to empower students with basic entrepreneurial skills.

The event exposed the participants to various entrepreneurial avenues they can take advantage of whilst in school.

The Entrepreneurship Summit, held on the theme: “Create and Secure a Better Future,” is part of Hollard’s Larger Streetwise Financial Literacy programme, aimed at inculcating entrepreneurial mind-set among students, to enable them to take risk in starting a business after school, in order to earn multiple streams of income and become financially independent.

The event brought together over 500 students from the various tertiary educational institutions, who expressed some expectations, including how to start a business, being resilient in business as well as how to manage and create a profitable business venture.

Mr Daniel Boi Addo, the Managing Director of Hollard Insurance, in his welcome address, said Hollard believed in the entrepreneurial abilities of the Ghanaian youth and would provide the necessary platform to nurture their entrepreneurial skills towards becoming business owners in the near future.

He encouraged the participants to scout for challenges within their communities and find solutions through the development of various products and services to satisfy those needs.

Mr Boi Addo advised them to start their businesses on a smaller scale and nurture them to become globally competitive brands by adopting strategic marketing tools.

Mr Iddrisu Nashiru, a Business Development Strategist and Managing Director of Hollard Life Assurance, who spoke on the topic: “Developing Entrepreneurship Mind-set”, said an entrepreneur always finds solutions to societal problems and sees opportunities in every life situation, adding that, every entrepreneur must be creative, confident and have positive mind-set.

He underlined the need for entrepreneurs to develop products and services that were of value to their customers and should always seek customer feedback, in order to factor them in product development.

Mr Nashiru believed that research should be a critical component in every business development because it helped one to understand his/her customers’ needs better and developed suitable products and services to satisfy that pressing need.

There were some young and established entrepreneurs who shared their success stories with the participants and encouraged them to take risk in starting a business.

A mentorship session was organised as part of the Entrepreneurship Summit, which enabled the organisers to guide students on how to develop various business projects.

Some topics treated at the summit included Developing an Entrepreneurial Mindset, The Role of an Entrepreneur, Creating Value for Your Customers, Connecting with the Right People and Creating Multiple Income Streams.

Hollard Ghana Holdings Limited is a subsidiary of Hollard International which manages the international portfolio of the Hollard Groupcurrently operating in 18 countries in Africa and Asia.

The thriving insurance company has operations, partnerships and investments in South Africa, Ghana, Namibia, Mozambique, Botswana, Zambia, Australia, China, India and Pakistan.

It envisioned to aggressively grow its insurance businesses in Ghana and will do so by creating dynamic, consumer-oriented insurance solutions that meet the needs of all Ghanaians.