AAR: Affordable Insurance

In this episode recorded on 12.09.2024, we are joined by AAR Insurance’s CEO, Justine Kosgei, and Head of Distribution, James Kamau, as we explore affordable and flexible insurance solutions for families and businesses.We also cover insurance penetration in the country, their ShwAARi product, implementing cloud Infrastructure and digital transformation to enhance service provision, and their partnerships with various stakeholders to provide effective insurance coverage.Subscribe to get notified when we make a new post.Key Quotes“There are quite a number of barriers that make insurance not accessible amongst Kenyans. One of them is affordability. For a fact, insurance is expensive compared to some of the other priorities in the household…The other barrier to insurance would be probably the product designs, maybe they're a bit complicated for the ordinary person to understand. And the other would be probably trust.”James Kamau“The ShwAARi proposition was all about bringing that simplicity to medical insurance and the product has very unique features. It is a very innovative product. It has what we call a one-limit. Most, in fact, all health insurance products have an aspect of inpatient-outpatient and then quite a number of sub-limits to address other concerns like dental, optical maternity and what have you, pre-existing conditions. So what ShwAARi does is to create a solution that is one limit. It gives you a lot of empowerment because you are able to decide on the limit that you have bought.”James Kamau“As a result of having our systems in the cloud, we're able to have platforms that provide services in a paperless and electronic manner. So we have a core platform that supports us, especially on claims. One area of this is our claims. That means that, for our customers, we have used this to ensure that they can access services digitally. Using mobile, you can view your health insurance benefits. Using the mobile, you can go to the hospital and be identified using biometrics. Your fingerprints can be used to access your insurance card, and then you can be given services. Then using the same platform hospitals can submit their claims digitally because the platform connects the hospital systems to our systems and therefore we do not need human intervention or paperwork to do that.”Justin Kosgei“Finally, I'd like to just highlight one more thing, which we tested again in partnership with our M-TIBA providers, where we worked with transport sectors Saccos to have an evacuation product because of the huge number of accidents that we have in the country. I think recently we've had a lot of accidents happening. Things that we noticed is that whenever accidents happen, there's a delay in getting emergency help. Normally there's a lot of lives that can be saved within that time frame.”Justin KosgeiShow Notes00:00:00 Introduction00:05:16 Insurance Penetration00:08:20 Technological and Innovative Solutions 00:14:25 Affordability and Transparency 00:16:41 Insurance Products for Women and Youth00:25:06 Microinsurance00:32:53 Cloud Infrastructure and Digital Transformation00:34:20 ShwAARi00:39:18 Restrictive Limits on Dental and Optical00:45:53 Flexible Solutions for the Underserved Market00:50:43 Home and Business Insurance Products Get full access to The Mwango Weekly at mwangocapital.substack.com/subscribe