CFOs risk eroded earnings if workforce health remains invisible to the finance function. Most Nigerian risk registers list naira volatility, forex exposure, interest rates, and supply chain threats, rarely the physical and mental condition of staff, yet employee health quietly reduces productivity, increases turnover, and raises costs.
Nigeria’s health financing structure amplifies the problem. Coverage under the National Health Insurance Authority reached roughly 21.7 million people by the end of 2025, still below 10 percent of a population exceeding 220 million. Out-of-pocket payments dominate, accounting for well over 70 percent of total health expenditure, with some assessments placing Nigeria among the highest in the world for such spending. That financing mix leaves actuarial and claims records scarce, so employers manage an often invisible liability with benefits budgets built on guesswork.
Global research offers a scale that should unsettle CFOs even where local data are thin. The World Health Organization attributes 12 billion lost workdays and roughly $1 trillion in productivity losses each year to depression and anxiety. Gallup found that a two-point decline in employee engagement in 2024 corresponded to about $438 billion in lost productivity across the global economy. Multiple studies also show costs from presenteeism, staff who are at work but impaired, run five to ten times higher than those from absenteeism, making underperformance a larger drain than absence.
Local conditions are likely to increase those hidden costs. Longer commutes, high out-of-pocket medical bills, currency-driven cost-of-living pressure, and limited access to diagnostics are factors that push undiagnosed chronic conditions and presenteeism higher than in markets with stronger health infrastructure. The absence of Nigerian-specific statistics is not proof the cost is small, it is proof the risk is unpriced and often recorded as attrition, mistakes, or missed targets.
The corrective is intelligence, not perks. Finance needs aggregated, anonymised workforce health data that can be trended and underwritten, the same way lenders use credit reference data on repayment behaviour. That profile would identify cohorts trending toward higher chronic disease risk, increased absenteeism likelihood, or elevated turnover well before losses appear in the ledger. For insurers and brokers, richer data reduces uncertainty, enabling better priced and broader group health and life products, which in turn improves affordability for employers.
The CFO’s opening move is procedural, not clinical. Workforce health should be treated as a quantifiable input, trended and reviewed alongside forex exposure and cost of funds, not delegated entirely to HR or revisited only at benefits renewal. Companies that build visibility now, ahead of the mandatory health insurance measures already moving through national policy, will be budgeting for workforce risk rather than being surprised by it.
The author, Igbokwe, founded WellNewMe, a workforce health risk intelligence platform operating in the UK and Nigerian markets.
