Technology as we know is a man-made object or better defined as a series of processes designed to assist mankind, which is in no doubt a complimentary addition to the business of insurance.

According to Mckinsey & Co., in his 2022 report on creating value, finding focus and global insurance, the insurance industry was still inbound in premiums in 2021. Following the slowdown in 2020, global insurance lost premiums of about $6 billion in 2021.

It also emphasises the ongoing fight for the customer, with insurtech driving digital innovation and disruption in the industry, with investment in insurtech worldwide growing from $1 billion in 2004, to $7.2 billion in 2019 and $14.6 billion in 2021.

It is important to know that over 40% of the insurtechs are focused on the marketing and distribution segment of the insurance value chain.

Bancassurance

Bancassurance describes an authorised relationship in collaboration between a bank and an insurance company. The insurance company uses the bank’s distribution channels to sell its products, and banks in turn receive a fee from the insurance company.

This collaboration is a good association as it is mutually beneficial to both parties. When CBN ended the universal banking system in Nigeria, banks were constantly in search of complementary solutions to enhance their core earnings. 

Bancassurance was therefore one of those solutions. The banking system in Nigeria has evolved from analogue-based with transactions processed manually, to digitisation. Transactions are now being processed at the fingertips of customers with the advent of modern technology.

The insurance industry in the space cannot and should not accept being left behind. With the evolution of the digitisation era, Ecobank invested in technology infrastructure to power our financial services business. Today we run a one-bank single pan-African platform across our 33 affiliates, giving us the edge to provide a variety of payment services in-country and across borders.

Our universal corporate electronic platform, which we call Ecobank OmniPlus, is a secure electronic banking channel, which provides our corporate banking single process for transacting and reporting needs, with real-time global account access and customisable setup features.

Our clients have control over their financial functions and keep track of receipt, payment and liquidity, all with one secure global solution.

An important feature of this platform is that it is a multi-geography, multi-language and multi-currency platform, allowing customers have single access to all their accounts, in all the affiliates and counties where Ecobank is present. 

One other feature beneficial to insurance clients is the Internal Direct Demi Condo. The module allows insurance companies to pull recurring payments from their customers’ Ecobank accounts, based on some defined criteria or policy.

Other electronic channels like the mobile app, Omni Lite, online banking platform for SMEs and commercial banking retails, USSD, etc, we can integrate insurance companies, outlining some policy collections from their customers, using unique identifiers and policy codes.

Various entities can collaborate with Ecobank via an API. We have collaborated with many corporate bodies and are ready for more partnerships.

In her submission, Ola Williams, Country Manager, Microsoft believes that while the global players have been a lot more aggressive in this area of creating capabilities to build a kind of file automation for passive management, automation associated with heavy transaction processes on both the customers’ side, and the policy managers’ side.

“In our region, this has not been the case; not for a lack of intent from the insurance providers but more of a misalignment between those who provide the main insurance services and those who provide technology services.

“There has never been a focus effort to co-invent, co-build and co-innovate”, she said.

Jonah Adams, Managing Director, Interswitch Systegra, said the industry reminds him of where retail banking was in 2002.

“The insurance market is fragmented, not operating at scale and lacks collaboration internally and eternally.

“The market is ripe for intervention, but the question is, what type of intervention is necessary at this time to begin to make the market operate at scale?

“One of the things that a lot of people don’t realise is that when you’re trying to intervene in an industry or market, either the regulator, private sector, or someone that has an interest in the market needs to deliberately make the effort to build a core system that enables that industry to thrive.

“When you look at what is going on in the insurance space, in Nigeria and across Africa, fundamentally, what is missing is that core infrastructure that allows everybody to talk to each other, interact and allow outside players such as fintechs, banks and others, to collaborate with that industry.

“If the market size is about 68 billion, it means someone or a group of people need to take 10% of that potential opportunity and invest in that market”.

According to Adams, the language across the industry needs to be standardised. There must be standardisation around distribution, access, and collaboration to allow people that operate at the periphery to innovate and thrive.

Samuel Ogbu, Group CEO, Old MutualWest, Africa also shared his views thus:

Talking about collaboration, partnerships and ecosystems, we are recognising that we have a common interest in solving problems like any other industry, delivering outstanding customer value.

In getting there, we need to give a lot of value to our partners, the business itself, capital providers, the society and community at large to protect our franchise to operate with.

Fundamentally, the problems have changed, the way they need to be addressed, the way people perceive those problems and the way customers receive those problems have changed. Innovation and technology can help us do two things:

• A process of evolution
• A process of revolution

Evolution is about doing things better. With existing promises that we need to deliver on. We need speed, efficiency, effectiveness because time has moved on, expectations have changed, what was found yesterday is not found today.

The question we all should have in mind is: how can I face the future with greater financial confidence? How can I mitigate risk and solve problems? How can I make better decisions?

In the evolution of that, innovation and technology has a big part to play in helping us be faster, more effective and also helping us know how big the market is.

The second is Revolution. For me, it’s the creation of wealth.

The world that I’ve lived in says I have to be part of an average; how can you make me feel special? How can you sell me user-based insurance? These information come from data and knowing the behaviour of clients. So, partnership is important.

We shouldn’t try to compete, we should collaborate.

Sola Ajayi, Executive Head of Sales, Leadway Assurance had these to say:

If you take a look at the history of the insurance industry, you’d find that in most countries where the industry has had a leap, there are factors involved:

• Situations where there are significant catastrophic impact
• Government regulations

In Nigeria, one of the key issues we have in the economy at this point is the economic situation itself. The customers need to be able to afford insurance.

There’s room for growth but insurance fundamentally requires the big players to collaborate with those who are bringing the needed skill to the table.

We need to be able to understand exactly what the customers need. If the customers see value, they will shove out cash.

The reality is that people are not buying insurance as much as we would like them to, not because they are ignorant or can’t get it. The question we need to address is; why do we not have it?

Mayowa Owolabi, CEO, PaddyCover

Focusing on what has been done to tackle the low penetration of insurance, Mayowa Owolabi, CEO, PaddyCover said:

The key thing in insurance is that not everybody wants it, not everybody wants to buy it because of our spiritual mindset especially in Nigeria, no one wants to bring out money.

What we’ve done to bridge this gap is that we are working with industries, stakeholders and regulators to make insurance more affordable, pushing in market education, insurance benefits and ease of payment.

TechEconomy.ng was the official media partner of #IMT2022 | Insurance Meets Tech

Data has become a source of wealth and power. Organisations that have data have a lot of power in their hands.

In the context of conversation today, data has become a key disruptive factor that organisations leverage to gain competitive advantage.

Ola Williams, the Country Manager, Microsoft Nigeria, made further submissions while speaking at Insurance Meets Tech Conference held on Thursday, September 29 2022 in Lagos:

Combined with cloud and innovation, data can actually be a game changer in any business and much more so, in insurance today. 

When we look at leveraging the cloud, cloud drives data innovation and gives organisations the ability to gain a lot of insight that would otherwise not be visible to the ordinary eyes.

When you put your data in an aggregated manner, with the right tools, it would give you detailed reporting of what data signifies.

Taking insurance in a literal context

Insurance is the transfer of risk from one entity to another. That means the insurer collects data from the insured, people that have different products with you. That gives you a lot of insights about the behaviours and preferences of your customers. 

So leveraging big data to see the pattern in which an organisation or individual is gaining claims can help you to customise products and services that are relevant to that organisation.

We can leverage data to:

• Gain competitive advantage;
• Provide differentiated offerings to customers
• Engage customers in a more meaningful way that is relevant to them, etc

With all the possibilities, why is there still very slow adoption of insurance?

There are different factors:

1. Regulatory factor

When we look at regulation from a vicinity point of view, then that limits our ability to drive creativity and innovation.

But when you look at innovation from the point of view of how we ensure that we are taking the right steps, the right resources and the right processes to ensure that the capabilities we have today will be able to leverage them effectively, that is a strategy that organisations need to look at.

How do we continue to innovate even within the guidelines of the regulatory authorities and policies in place?

2. Access to technology 

We see access to technology not only in terms of purchasing power, but also, when technology is deployed within the organisation, that is not the end, we have to look at culture, people and processes.

When we have technology without the right people in place, the right culture to adopt the technology and the right processes within the organisation, then that would reduce the ability for the organisation to leverage technology.

For example, an organisation invests a lot of money into technology and they are not seeing results, the issue is not that the technology is not working but probably and most times, the commensurate culture, processes and procedures to make sure that the technology works and ensure the benefits of the business, are not in alignment.

3. Access to talent 

There’s the need to have the right skillset within the organisation that would help to ensure that technology investment is put to good use.

Talent is not just having brilliant set of people, there’s the need for organisations to be deliberate about skilling and re-skilling because technology also evolves and moves at a high speed.

To see the results of technology, the right talent should be attracted and a proper plan put in place to ensure that talents are skilled regularly to adequately utilise the technology investment within the organisation.

When we talk about regulation, regulators and how much we adopt technology, which do you prefer: a retrofit or disruption?

There’s no magic bullet actually, it’s really different from scenarios and the phase that an organisation is in adopting technology. There are organisations that are just starting, it depends on the trends and the drivers within the industry. 

We see some insurance companies that are investing in insurtech now because they need a place to compete with borne-in-the-cloud competition, and we see insurance companies that are just waiting to see how it goes.

So, for insurance companies that are borne in the cloud, they are just disruptive, that’s a distraction but for organisations that have legacy solutions, legacy customer engagement, policies, procedures and regulations, they need to have a blend of disruptive approach as well as retrofit because you don’t want to destroy what you already have. It’s a journey and we need to take on that journey.

It’s important to partner with organisations like Microsoft because we have what we call industry cloud. Today we are invested heavily in bringing in people with industry expertise into our organisation.

Based on our experience working with multiple organisations within the financial services sector where there’s insurance, banking and others, we have worked with several cloud owners and programs. So it is important to have a partner that will work with you to scale your organization and not bring it down.

Headlined by leaders from foremost insurance and technology corporates such Ecobank, Microsoft Nigeria, aYo Holdings Ltd, Old Mutual, Curacel, Leadway Assurance, AXA Mansard, MediSmarts, ActivEdge, ETAP, MotoMarket, Paddy Cover and Interswitch Group, the summit is designed to foster collaborative discourses on how technology can bolster the growth of Nigerian insurance sector. 

Themed ‘Leveraging Insurtech to Disrupt the Customer Acquisition Journey’, the IMT 2022 conference will be held on the 29th, September 2022, as a hybrid event at the Ecobank Pan African Centre, from 9:00 am to 4: 00 pm. 

Attendance for the discourse is FREE, but registration is mandatory for all participants. Here is a step-by-step guide on how to book your seat for in-person or virtual participation.

1. Visit www.insurancemeetstech.com 
2. On the home page, click on the register button. 
3. Fill in your information. 
4. Select your preferred participation option (physical or virtual).  
5. Check that all the information registered is correct; then click on the register. 
6. Check the email you provided, including spam, for a confirmation email and other information that will guide your delegate access.

Should you have any issues while registering, you can reach out to Bolanle – 07039363184 or Idris – 08026974482.

IMT 2022 will feature presentations from Microsoft Nigeria, MTN, Active Edge and MotoMarket, while the Group Chief Executive Officer, aYo Holdings Ltd (South Africa), Marius Botha, whose organisation has a presence in five African countries, will share learnings on how tech has enabled their growth and adoption across the continent.

Themed “Leveraging Insurtech to disrupt the customer acquisition journey,” Insurance Meets Tech Conference (IMT2022), which holds at Ecobank’s pan-African Center at Ozumba Mbadiwe, Lagos, on Thursday, September 29, 2022, will gather industry captains who will share insights and data on how the insurance sector players can leverage tech and digitalisation to deepen access and market penetration.

The leading ICT firm joins other organisations such as Ecobank, Microsoft Nigeria, aYo Holdings Ltd, Old Mutual, Curacel, Leadway Assurance, AXA Mansard, MediSmarts, ActivEdge, ETAP, MotoMarket, Paddy Cover and Interswitch Group, whose leaders will be speaking or making presentations to the delegates. 

IMT 2022 will feature presentations from Microsoft Nigeria, MTN, Active Edge and MotoMarket, while the Group Chief Executive Officer, aYo Holdings Ltd (South Africa), Marius Botha, whose organisation has a presence in five African countries, will share learnings on how tech has enabled their growth and adoption across the continent. 

With MTN Nigeria confirming participation and providing full internet broadband for the industry discourse, the insurtech summit will become the first Nigerian event to stream on MTN’s newly launched 5G internet network. 

IMT2022 Convener, Odion Aleobua, who is also the Chief Executive Officer of Modion Communications, said; “We are poised to disrupt West Africa’s insurance and insurtech space, and it will be a thrilling experience for those who would participate in person for this era-defining discourse.

“The delegates who would join virtually here would be streaming via a first-of-its-kind 5G internet broadband at a connection speed of over 900 mbps. Interestingly, virtual conference organisers need about 100 mbps for a superior streaming experience, but with 900 mbps 5G internet broadband, we have an outstanding internet connection plan that will be the first to be put in place in Nigeria,” Aleobua said.”