ABSTRACT

The study investigated the effect of corporate governance on performance of insurance companies in Nigeria with specific objectives to ascertain the effect of corporate governance on profit after tax of insurance companies in Nigeria, It collected secondary data from various annual report of the sampled insurance companies in Nigeria. The study adopted ex post facto research design and extracted board size, board independence, number of female board members, Return on Asset, Return on Equity and Profit after tax. The study employed the ordinary least squared based multiple regression method of data estimation and found that there has been strong evidence from the hypotheses tested that corporate governance proxies jointly have significant effect on return on assets, profit after tax and return on equity of the firms. The study therefore concludes that corporate governance has significant effect on performance of insurance companies in Nigeria. Based on the findings of the study, the researcher recommended that Insurance companies should ensure that there is cooperation among board members, and that they should ensure that board are adequately constituted so as to influence performance in a way that it would positively affect return on assets.