AIO Lists Benefits of Digitalisation to African Insurance Market

Ebere Nwoji

The African Insurance Organisation (AIO) has said the digitalisation of insurance market in Africa will help streamline the insurance value chain and enhance the efficiency of administrative processes.

The AIO stated this after a recent study on digitalisation of insurance market in Africa, an aspect of the Africa Insurance pulse launched by the organisation recently.
The organisation said to achieve digitalisation in the African insurance space, insurers and reinsurers are considering various strategies.

Along this line, the AIO disclosed that one of the global insurers with presence in 12 African countries, Allianz Africa, has initiated a digital transformation project, with its masterpiece being the Allianz Business System (ABS).

The ABS is a platform developed with a customer-centric approach to standardise and harmonise products, systems, and processes across the continent.
Speaking on the system, AIO president, Delphine Traore, said: “In order to enable digitisation achieve the intended goals, we must start with a fundamental aspect of simplifying before digitalisation.

“This is to reduce the complexity of processes and products to offer our customers, a unique and optimal customer experience, wherever they are,” Traoré said.

He said it expects that most insurance products would be distributed digitally, adding that products should be prioritised to address individual customer, followed by enterprise products and finally, specialised solutions.

“We continue our digitisation journey by adding new lines of businesses and products to the ABS platform, making them more accessible to our business partners and clients.

“This is even more relevant now, given the ongoing health crisis that is changing our way of doing business in the insurance sector,” he added.

According to him, the main factors promoting digitisation are the increasing mobile phone penetration, a large number of young people, a growing middle class and compulsory insurance schemes.

He said most African insurance executives take a careful approach when investing in technology, using an equivalent of up to two per cent of their revenues to drive forward their digitisation strategy.

Traore,who is also Regional Chief Operating Officer Allianz Africa, said Allianz does not share the same point of view.
He said “We are investing 10 per cent of our GWP in digitalisation. It started well before COVID-19.”
He maintained that the transformation would ultimately help increase insurance penetration, encourage innovation and promote financial inclusion