Prince Soyewo MFR wins 2025 Champion Newspapers’ Life Time Achievement Award as Prestige Insurance Brokers emerges Most Outstanding Insurance Broker of the Year

Management of Champion Newspapers recently paid a courtesy visit on Executive Chairman of Prestige Insurance Brokers Limited Prince Feyisayo Soyewo, MFR, during which he was officially presented with letters of awards norminating him for Life Time Achievement Award and Prestige Insurance Brokers as 2025 Champion Newspapers’ Most Outstanding Insurance Broker of the Year.

 KELVIN EGERUE, Managing Editor and IBRAHIM QUADRI

When versatile American author Benjamin Franklin with the pen name, The Busy Body wrote that, “I pronounce it certain that there was never yet a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous”, he might have had the likes of Prince Dr Feyisayo Soyewo; the Asiwaju Onigbagbo of Ago-Iwoye in mind.

It is therefore not surprising that the Executive Chairman of Prestige Insurance Brokers Limited, Prince (Dr) Feyisayo Soyewo, MFR, has emerged winner of the Champion Newspapers’ Life Time Achievements Award’ just as his company, Prestige Insurance Brokers Limited clinched the 2025 Champion Newspapers’ Most Outstanding Insurance Broker of the Year Laurel.

This double honours on Prince Dr Soyewo and his 38-year-old Prestige Insurance Brokers marks the first time in the history of Champion Newspapers’ annual awards that a chief executive officer and his company will mount the podium to receive separate awards same day.

Prince Soyewo, who has put in over 50 years of dedicated service and commitment to the Nigerian Insurance industry ably qualifies as a household name in the industry on account of his multiple roles, qualifications, competences and integrity.

His steadfastness goes beyond insurance as Feyisayo who is a foremost Prince of Ago-Iwoye in Ogun State is an outstanding philanthropist who has impacted the lives of numerous indigent students through his Soyewo Foundation.

The Group Managing Director and Editor-in-Chief of Champion Newspapers Limited, Dr (Mrs) Nwadiuto Iheakanwa, who recently led a delegation to Prince Soyewo’s Alausa, Ikeja, Lagos office for the formal presentation of his award nomination letter ahead of the eventual award ceremony which holds March 14, 2026 at the prestigious Eko Hotels and Suites had observed the multiple roles been played by Prince Soyewo leading to a national honour been conferred on him by the administration of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.

“On all scores, our findings, largely corroborated by our independent assessors, confirm that Prince (Dr) Feyisayo Soyewo, MFR and his Prestige Insurance Brokers have in line with his vision to become one of the finest insurance practitioners in Nigeria impacted positively on the professional conduct of insurance broking services in the country through your unflinching adherence to the ethics and standard practice of the business of insurance.

“Your journey to a successful insurance career which began in 1975 when you joined the Guardian Royal Exchange Assurance saw you spending 13 meritorious years of skilled underwriting and claims management before the fulfillment of your desire to be self-employed thus establishing Prestige Insurance Brokers Ltd in 1988, thereby becoming an Insurance Broker.

“You have diligently nurtured Prestige Insurance Brokers Ltd to become one of the highest ranking and foremost successful Insurance Broking firms in Nigeria today. A Fellow of the NCRIB, you were elected president of the body in 2003. One of your many landmark achievements was the signing into law of Nigerian Council of Registered Insurance Brokers Act, for which you played tremendous roles right from your serving as Deputy President of the body hence you are proudly referred to as the Charter President”, Dr Iheakanwa submitted.

The highly celebral and elated Prestige Insurance Brokers’ Executive Chairman in company of his management team made up of General Manager Operation, Mr Olugbenga Etimiri; Execution Assistant, Mr Patrick Emeka and Manager Technical, Odumosu Doyin praised the efforts and doggedness of Champion Newspapers in helping to foster a better society in Nigeria where every person would be guaranteed the freedom of speech and expression.

He observed that the fact that Champion Newspapers has remained on the streets since its establishment in October 1988 is a testament of its resilience and relevance to the nation.

Soyewo said, “You have remained strong and steadfast. I want to congratulate Champion Newspapers. It is still alive and I pray it will continue to grow stronger and stronger for many years to come.

“You have remained very strong with us in the insurance industry and we will remind the younger ones the roles that Champion played in developing insurance industry in Nigeria.

“I am happy for you to have considered Prestige Insurance for nomination. I have spent over 50 years in the industry, so I’m grateful for the honour. So many of us are qualified for the award but you have singled me out, I’m appreciative.

“It was not easy then fighting and struggling for a charter status for insurance brokers in Nigeria, when I was the president of NCRIB, I was looking lean and ugly then but God stood by us and we got through, and I assure you that this award will strengthen me at this advanced age to support the industry the more,” Prince Soyewo declared..

While making reference to his national honour award, he disclosed that “the national award was sponsored by my colleagues from the Eastern part of this country because I was always with them without charging them. I look back and I feel happy because of the impacts.”

On what keeps Prestige Insurance Brokers Limited going forward despite the numerous challenges, he disclosed that, “doing it the right way; the way that it should be done, being professional. We (insurance brokers) are not full professionals because we don’t practice in our natural names. If we practice in our natural names, then we are full professionals. If insurance brokers practice in our natural names just like lawyers, we would be more careful with the things that we do.”

Prince Soyewo established a Foundation in 1991 as a way of giving out scholarships. “It is to be helping children that are brilliant but indigent. That’s a source of joy for me and we are going stronger and stronger,” he noted.

In his comment, Champion Newspapers’ Managing Editor, Mr Kelvin Egerue stated that Prestige Insurance Brokers was established in 1988 which coincided with the year Champion Newspapers was birthed.

Egerue explained that over the years, the chairman was not just a big name in Insurance industry but has been a philanthropist. “His insurance pedigree is topnotch.”

It is worthy of note that Prestige Insurance Brokers is one of the leading insurance brokerage firms in Nigeria with international affiliations and agency partners. The Chairman is a highly respected insurance icon and a past President of the Nigeria Council of Registered Insurance Brokers (NCRIB) as well as former Chairman of the African Insurance Brokers Association (AIBA).

Prince as he is fondly called, graduated in Business Administration from the University of Lagos and has decades of experience in the Nigerian insurance industry. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Insurance Institute of Nigeria (CIIN), Fellow of the Institute of Directors (IoD), and Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Management (NIM).

He was conferred with the National Award of Member of the Order of the Federal Republic (MFR). He is the Olori Omooba and Asiwaju Onigbagbo of Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State.

He has been instrumental to the formulation of insurance regulations and professionalism in Nigeria and Africa. He is also noted for his philanthropic efforts, including the Soyewo Foundation and for mentoring young professionals in the industry.