Browsing: Insurance penetration in Africa

• Kenya’s Bluewave Insurance Agency has announced plans to raise $6 million to expand into five new African markets to increase insurance penetration in markets characterized by low uptake.
• Company Founder and CEO Adelaide Odhiambo says the investment would be raised over the next three years.
• The insurer is partnering with Mobile Network Operators and banks to distribute affordable micro-insurance products, with plans to enter Uganda, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Malawi, DRC, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Zambia.

Kenya’s Bluewave Insurance Agency has announced plans to raise $6 million as the firm seeks to expand into five new African markets, aiming to increase insurance penetration in regions characterized by low uptake. Adelaide Odhiambo, Founder and CEO of Bluewave Insurance Agency, stated that the investment would be raised over the next three years to support the expansion plans.

Bluewave Insurance Agency’s new target markets

The company has forged partnerships with large aggregators, specifically Mobile Network Operators …

• Allianz reports that the overall group equity value is estimated to be more than US$2.1 billion, and the new business is likely to rank in the top three in the majority of the areas in which it operates.
• Initially, Sanlam will retain a 60 per cent stake in the joint venture, with Allianz holding a 40 per cent stake and the option to purchase an additional nine per cent at a later date
• Insurance penetration in Africa is considerably lower than the global average, standing at 2.78 per cent in 2019 compared to 7.23 per cent globally
• Only about 1 per cent of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa has insurance coverage

South African insurer Sanlam and German insurance giant Allianz have agreed to create a joint venture that will consolidate both their present and future activities across Africa.

The largest non-banking financial services institution in Africa

The partnership between the …

However, economic growth and the rapid expansion of digital and mobile services are set to change this. 

With the African middle class growing across many African nations, the target market for insurance products is growing.

The report highlighted that there has been a significant rise in demand for digital solutions, as smartphone and affordable internet penetration deepens across the continent, providing opportunities for InsureTechs to step in and offer innovative products.…

Insurance uptake in any sector is always influenced by the insuring public’s awareness about insurance. Other factors are secondary to the fact. 

A recent high profile insurance round table session discussed insurance penetration based on secondary factors like introduction of affordable products in the market, introduction of bancassurance into the market, agricultural insurance and micro-insurance. Other factors discussed included unhealthy competition in the market which leads to predatory pricing. Public awareness on insurance was touched on based on the need to create a risk management culture among the public and more so to educate the public on the benefits of insurance uptake. This round table however did not expound on how this can be achieved.  

Insurance penetration and its growth in the initial stages was mainly through insurance intermediaries comprising of agents and brokers and this drove insurance growth steadily upwards until the two started being …

On March 15th this year the government announced a raft of measures to curb the pandemic brought about by COVID-19. Among the measures were that government employees and businesses were to be shut, a minimum number of people maintained and the rest to start working from home except for those providing essential services. 

 It is now five months down the line and the initial excitement that a new formula had been found of remote working from home has become a damper and many CEOs have realised it is not workable. During this time into a pandemic that rapidly reshaped how companies operate and which is nowhere in sight in ending, an increasing number of executives now say that remote work, while necessary for safety much of this year, is not their preferred long-term solution once the coronavirus crisis passes. 

Some companies had even vowed …

The Covid-19 world pandemic has disrupted our lives in a way most can only fantasize about. It has not spared any sector and some are even making a kill from it. Talk of the entrepreneurial spirit in this country!

The same cannot be said of the insurance sector, however. For starters the insurance industry has stated that Covid-19 is not coverable because it falls under pandemics which are an exclusion in a typical insurance cover. A pandemic has to be defined by World Health Organisation (WHO) as such for it to qualify as an exclusion in an insurance product. Few insurance policies cover pandemics despite the potential for disaster, because the risk is not well understood and also difficult to price. But going forward there is a huge interest from companies looking for protection against business interruption suggesting that pandemic policies are the next big thing in commercial insurance.

When …

When Association of Kenya Insurers (AKI) released it’s 2018 insurance industry report few expected the shocker that the results would provide.

Insurance penetration in the economy relative to the Gross Domestics Product (GDP) fell from 2.7 percent in 2017 to 2.4 percent in 2018. Overall premium increase was recorded to Kshs 216.11 billion from 210 billion the previous year.

The fact that the results showed a decline in insurance penetration in the insurance industry was something that most people didn’t expect especially with the hype that we get of how the economy is doing well.

The results are a true reflection of the industry noting that they are actually audited figures from the various insurance companies. This contrasts sharply with the unaudited figures and subsequent reports that come from those figures always released by Insurance Regulatory Authority (IRA). Perhaps it’s time IRA left that work to AKI if they cannot …