EMPIRICAL ANALYSES OF THE STRUCTURE AND PATTERNS OF INVESTMENT OF NON-BANK FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS IN NIGERIA: EVIDENCE FROM THE INSURANCE BUSINESS By Adamgbo, Suka I. C. Department of Banking and Finance Rivers State Polytechnic, Bori +234-803-754-6926 and Ahamefula, A. Nzenwata Graduate Student Dept. of Finance and Banking University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State aham.nzenwata@yahoo.co.uk +234-803-544-6622 ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION The financial system in any economy consists of a number of components among which is the insurance industry. Considerable attention has been devoted to evaluating the relationship between the economy and financial system and markets. Most of what we have learned relates to banking systems and securities markets – This paper provides an analysis of the structure and pattern of the investment of insurance companies in Nigeria during the period 1996 to 2009. For this purpose, a two stage multiple and simple regression analyses was performed. We also used a simple trend analysis to compare investments in the sector. We discovered that insurance industry investment taken as a unit was statistically significant in its contribution to growth in the economy. But taken individually, this was not the case. It was also shown in the study that insurance companies during the period of the study held a huge amount of their funds in cash deposits. Given these findings, the following recommendations were made among others: that policy makers restrict the amount of idle cash that insurance companies can hold in cash and compel them to invest more of their funds in the mortgage sector of the economy.