Insurance regulators tasked on fast tracking micro insurance development in Africa
Insurance industry regulators have a critical role to play in deepening insurance penetration through development of the micro insurance sector with flexible policies and product development, stakeholders said at the recently concluded 11th International Microinsurance Conference on “Driving growth and sustainability – A business case for microinsurance”, held in Casablanca, Morocco.
According to Michael J. McCord, Chairman of the Microinsurance Network, the regulators, representing 27 countries at the conference were challenged on their role to support product development and distribution, but need to make sure they are not slowing down the process.
In the field of agriculture index insurance, the risk of price volatility was brought up as one of the main issues to consider, in addition to the importance of providing socio-economic data and not only satellite data for farmers.
The lack of yield data illustrated one of the constraints of using yield based insurance and governments were requested to play a role in data collection and management of yield measurements.
For index insurance to scale up, reaching out to community leaders and village chiefs is one way to counteract the problem of confidence and product complexity. In heath microinsurance, hospital cash is considered as a strong simplified product. Client education was highlighted especially in client servicing by digital means, and through direct agent interaction. Further, there was a focus on data management and the capacity of using big data to make meaningful products and pricing.
In the African Region, 62 million people are insured, covering 5.4 percent of the total population, mostly in Central and South Africa. While the regional premiums reach $647 million, only 1 percent are dedicated to microinsurance, showing the huge opportunity that remains in the region. The CIMA region possesses 200 insurance companies, but only 10 of these are working in microinsurance.
According to Jean-Claude Ngbwa, secretary general of CIMA, there exists a favourable regulatory environment within the CIMA region for investors to work in microinsurance. However, a consolidation of the insurance market will have to be implemented to lower the relatively high administrative costs.
The African stakeholders at the conference expanded on strategies for the development of social businesses and social responsibility programmes as a key driver to promote microinsurance in the region, providing simple and effective microinsurance products to low income people.
The Conference witnessed the launch of the preliminary briefing note of the 2015 Landscape of Microinsurance in Africa (2014 data). The study unveils a 30 percent growth1 of the microinsurance sector across the African region over a three-year period, with 61.9 million people covered by at least one microinsurance policy by the end of 2014, compared to 44.4 million people in 2011.
The total identified microinsurance written premiums in the region amount to almost USD 647 m, up from USD 387 m in 20113, representing a 31% comparable increase. A total coverage ratio of 5.4 percent of the total population was measured across the African region, up from 4.4 percent in 2011. This is comparable to the coverage ratio in Asia and Oceania at 4.33 percent (2012), though still below that in the Latin America and Caribbean region at 7.9 percent (2013).
“It is great to see indications of a maturing African market with an increasingly diversified coverage”, says McCord. Growth was measured across all product lines, with health, property and agriculture covers growing at a higher rate than life covers.
The growth in health covers can be attributed to a few programmes offering hospital cash or hospitalisation covers via Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), reaching some half a million clients. In terms of costs of distribution, the median commissions across channels were just 10 percent with a weighted average of 17 percent, with little evidence of the excessive fees seen in Latin America.
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