LISTEN NOW: Emerging market insurtechs, the future of insurance?

This webinar looks at the emergence and development of insurtechs and their impact. They have been hailed as disruptors in the insurance market and are attracting billions of dollars in venture capital globally.

Pieter Frederik Janse van Vuuren discusses the work of Cenfri to update their Insurtech Tracker . The tracker is a downloadable database with information on 292 insurtechs from 85 countries.

Cenfri identified four stages of evolution of insurtechs:

1. Digitisation – replacing paper based systems with digital systems
2. Tech-enabled partnerships – such as MNOs and e-commerce to distribute products
3. New data and analytics – the partner and insurtech together have access to more data on customers
4. Innovative models – this rich data environment allows for more innovative models of insurance such as index-based insurance, peer-to-peer insurance or demand-based insurance

Most insurtechs are still in the digitalisation stage and insurance penetration is on average 2% in emerging markets, so there is a way to go in this evolution.

Jeremy Leach founder of Inclusivity Solutions, shared their journey, and highlighted that one of the key challenges with insurance is payment hygiene. Payments are generally push payments and clients need to authenticate the payment each time they pay. Frictionless payments will be more successful, but many regulators and partner organisations have prevented pull payments for insurance products.

Insurance can help bring resilience and is also an enabler for other digital services, driving digital payments and supporting broader digitalisation. Insurance is often seen as something that comes last, behind payments, credit and savings, when actually insurance can drive positive digital and financial behaviours. You can read more on this concert in Jeremy’s blog post.