Financial literacy has to improve if African insurers are to make real in-roads
By Liz Booth, Africa Ahead
Insurance penetration figures are notoriously low across the continent and regulators regularly push insurers to try and make inroads into new segments in a bid to improve those numbers.
However, with a fast-growing population, the figures (with the exception of South Africa) remain below 10% and often below 5%..
The arrival of technology and smart solutions was expected to make a real difference, improving accessibility and also engaging with that younger population. However, technology alone will not solve all the issues.
Simon Richardson, vice president, EMEA & APAC at Equisoft, stresses: “Financial literacy is where it all starts. Technology has a role to play making information that is easy to understand, is easily accessible to people who will then consume that, feeling a confidence around the products that they will invest in as policyholders.”
He adds that partnering with local organisations is also crucial as businesses often underestimate the power and influence that local community groups can have.
Finally, he suggests that “offering innovative payment solutions, such as microinsurance and pay-as-you-go solutions, is important. It allows policyholders to get a feel for what insurance means, how the process works and crucially, how it makes them feel when they know they have the security of insurance.
“Overarching all of that, financial literacy is so fundamental and it is the thing that needs the real attention.”
Across the continent, life insurance is often that first insurance purchase made but the question for insurers is how to build onto that and engage consumers in a wider range of products. Again, technology has a role to play, believes Mr Richardson.
“Innovation and deliveries that we are currently involved with are around giving customers a portfolio view of what they have. Almost as importantly it shows them what they don’t have in terms of risk protection, education and any other financial service needs.
“Any digital platform should, as part of its creation and delivery, be giving airtime not just as a reflection of any holding that the consumer has, that one life insurance policy, but also to what you might identify as opportunities to build on that one policy. There are financial-planning tools and financial capabilities that go hand in hand with a number of digital platforms.
“On top of that, there are also options from an insurance product and benefit perspective to make it easy from a cost and understanding perspective to have additional riders such as disability or critical illness to make sure that we are giving a more comprehensive package of services to customers,” he added.
There are a number of avenues that insurers have explored through reward programmes and also time-bound offers for reduced premiums to add another layer of protection, Mr Richardson said.
Technology, he believes, also allows insurers to have a holistic view of any particular consumer and to encourage the policyholder to identify where their priority lies.
“Look at the data, use the analytics to ensure the offerings are personalised for a particular demographic or people at a particular life stage, making sure what is being promoted is absolutely going to be adding value to the customer. Those are the kind of things that can be added onto that first purchase of protection to make sure clients are adopting the full breadth of the insurance offering.”
At Equisoft, he said, they put a great deal of energy into their own research to “make sure we are understanding what is happening in the technology market but also that we understand what the customer needs and what are the different pain points in the different markets and then we use that to enhance our solutions to make sure they are meeting those identified needs. Ultimately it enables us to co-create some of those enhancements together with our clients based on marriage between what they are experiencing and what we have gleaned from our partnerships.”
Above all, he said, insurers should be using technology to prioritise the customer experience. From an Equiosft perspective, “we can use that as the point of departure for the design of digital solutions and all of the technology we are making available – it all has that customer-centricity.
“Being able to be a thought leader around customer expectations and what the problems are and how they can be solved, is essential for us. That gives us the credibility in the markets where we operate and that is how we are helping customers meet the needs of policyholders and stakeholders when it comes to insurance enablement.”
Source: www.afahpublishing.com
