Group items tagged

Bismart Insurance enables the uninsured African population to access Insurance through co-creating relevant products with existing affinity groups like saccos, schools, welfare groups, Micro-finance institutions etc and connecting them to insurance companies through technology.  At Bismart platform customers are able to reveiw and rate their insurance providers based on their experience, this forces insurance players to compete in giving our customers the best customer experience.

At Bismart platform customers are able to reveiw and rate their insurance providers based on their experience, this forces insurance players to compete in giving our customers the best customer experience.We enable customers to compare insurance policies from muiltiple providers not just based on price but based on benefits, exclusions and other customers reviews.

Another startup is Apollo Agriculture which raised $6 million Series A, akin to Pula. Not only did the pair raise the same round, Apollo Agriculture and Pula both deal with providing financial resources to smallholder farmers.

Pula is solving this problem by using technology and data. Through its Area Yield Index Insurance product, the insurtech startup leverages machine learning, crop-cut experiments and data points relating to weather patterns and farmer losses, to build products that cater to various risks.But getting farmers on board has never been easy, Goslinga told TechCrunch. According to her, Pula has understood not to sell insurance directly to small-scale farmers, because they can suffer from optimism bias. “Some think a climate disaster wouldn’t hit their farms for a particular season; hence, they don’t ask for insurance initially. But if they witness any of these climate risks during the season, they would want to get insurance, which is counterproductive to Pula,” said the founder in a phone call.

Pula, a Kenyan insurtech startup that specialises in digital and agricultural insurance to derisk millions of smallholder farmers across Africa, has closed a Series A investment of $6 million.The round was led by Pan-African early-stage venture capital firm, TLcom Capital, with participation from nonprofit Women’s World Banking. The raise comes after Pula closed $1 million in seed investment from Rocher Participations with support from Accion Venture Lab, Omidyar Network and several angel investors in 2018.

JUMO builds its credit profiles using behavioral data gathered from mobile wallets, cell phones and transaction data.

JUMO is a transaction and predictive technology platform that partners with mobile network operators and banks to offer customers microloans and access to savings and insurance products. They are currently active in six markets – Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia and Pakistan – with plans to soon launch in India, Bangladesh, Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria. JUMO has helped disburse over $1.6 billion in funding to small and micro enterprises, and has helped connect over 15 million people to credit and savings services.

Over the last decade, there has been a global increase in the focus on climate change and the risks and dangers associated with it. And for good reason. Damage from climate-related disasters was in the billions of dollars in 2019 alone. California wildfires caused $25 billion in property damage, while Typhoon Hagibis in Japan cost an estimated $15 billion. Other extreme weather events, including rampant brush fires in Australia, widespread droughts in East Africa and severe flooding in South Asia, have had devastating consequences.

Like Kin, NYC-based WorldCover was created in response to climate-related disasters. It works to provide drought insurance to farmers in Africa. When first launched, WorldCover was available only in Ghana and covered only one crop: maize. Since then, the company has expanded to multiple markets in East and West Africa, covering four categories of crops: cereals, legumes, root vegetables and perennials. WorldCover uses a combination of satellite imagery and on-the-ground sensors to understand local weather patterns in order to create insurance options for farmers facing some of the world’s worst droughts. The company uses its satellites to monitor rainfall patterns and trigger payouts immediately.

Robert is a father of four and lives in the rural areas at the outskirts of Tamale, in northern Ghana. He lives off his one hectare of land where he grows maize and groundnuts. He sells part of it to the local market and eats the rest with his family. Like many of the 475 million smallholder farmers around the world, he faces constant threats of droughts or other weather hazards that can destroy his family’s main source of subsistence: Crops. Ninety percent of farmers in Africa have no access to crop insurance or other safety net.

WorldCover addresses this problem by providing farmers with simple and affordable microinsurance policies, insuring their crops against the risk of drought. Microinsurance and farmers receive rapid payout in cases of drought during the crop growth period. WorldCover ran a full pilot project in 2015 among Rice and Sorghum farmers and signed up a significant number of farmers, with many more committed.

Cassava FinTech is a pan-African business using an integrated model to drive financial inclusion and digital transactions across the continent. Our core operations in Mobile Money, Social Payments Services, Digital Banking, International Remittances and Mobile Micro Insurance with presence in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Burundi, Lesotho and UK and partnerships in other African countries

Our Cropchain and LendIt platforms solve these two problems. Cropchain is our user-friendly integrated agricultural supply chain management platform that allows organizations to manage everything in the agricultural supply chain from outgrower schemes, logistics, traceability to digital trading, quality assurance and data analytics. LendIt, our financial inclusion platform enables farmers access digital services such mobile money payments for commodities sold, micro-lending/input financing, crop insurance and pension scheme for the informal sector.

Our Cropchain and LendIt platforms solve these two problems. Cropchain is our user-friendly integrated agricultural supply chain management platform that allows organizations to manage everything in the agricultural supply chain from outgrower schemes, logistics, traceability to digital trading, quality assurance and data analytics. LendIt, our financial inclusion platform enables farmers access digital services such mobile money payments for commodities sold, micro-lending/input financing, crop insurance and pension scheme for the informal sector.

Onboarding smallholder farmers onto the AgroCenta platform. Agents visit communities where smallholder farmers who deal in sorghum, rice, maize, millet and soybean are registered onto the AgroCenta platform to trade. Agents also work with farmer based organizations (FBOs) to carry out trading activities. 2 Facilitating trade deals on behalf of Smallholder farmers. Agents deal with buyers who wish to purchase directly from smallholder farmers. AgroCenta agents are trained in the field of technology, sales and marketing to effectively help smallholder farmers who have little or no knowledge of technology trade easily. 3 Gathering market information and statistical data. Agents are assigned to major trading markets across the country to collate data on market pricing for various commodities. This information is relayed to smallholder farmers via Voice technologies in languages they read and understand.

Cassava FinTech is a pan-African business using an integrated model to drive financial inclusion and digital transactions across the continent. Our core operations in Mobile Money, Social Payments Services, Digital Banking, International Remittances and Mobile Micro Insurance with presence in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Burundi, Lesotho and UK and partnerships in other African countries.

We are a global fintech pioneer, providing solutions for the financially excluded one product at a time. We are all about convenience for our customers, growth for our partners, and financial access for all. The need to solve wicked problems is what drives our innovative spirit.

Cassava FinTech is a pan-African business using an integrated model to drive financial inclusion and digital transactions across the continent. Our core operations in Mobile Money, Social Payments Services, Digital Banking, International Remittances and Mobile Micro Insurance with presence in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Burundi, Lesotho and UK and partnerships in other African countries.

Heya- fawry is an initiative in collaboration with arab women enterprise fund, Baheya, AXA and unilever to empower women, increase their opportunities in the financial market and help them to climb up the financial inclusion pyramid in Egypt Fawry as the leading e-payment network in Egypt is supporting poor and disadvantaged women by training them to become Heya fawry-agents, providing POS machines offering them complementary micro-insurance coverage. Ultimately, this initiative will allow poor unbanked women to have access to life-enhancing financial services (mobile top-ups, bill payments, money transfers, microloan payments, as well as essential nutrition and healthcare goods) directly via their nearest Fawry’s agents to raise income for them and their families and to enhance the well-being of the society. Fawry’s main aim is “to ensure that women access our services in the same extent as men do”

Cassava FinTech is a pan-African business using an integrated model to drive financial inclusion and digital transactions across the continent. Our core operations in Mobile Money, Social Payments Services, Digital Banking, International Remittances and Mobile Micro Insurance with presence in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Burundi, Lesotho and UK and partnerships in other African countries.

Since 2017, AgroCenta has successfully completed two rounds of funding to the tune of $750,000 to expand operations in Ghana. In 2017, AgroCenta won the Seedstars Global Competition against other 72 startups from emerging markets across the globe. AgroCenta has grown its farmer base to 45,000 providing additional services of access to finance for smallholder farmers, bringing smallholder farmers onto the financial sector to enjoy services such as crop insurance, micro lending/input financing, mobile payments through mobile money and finally pensions schemes targeted at farmers and beneficiaries in the informal sector with special attention to women and youth. Since 2017, AgroCenta has helped over 28,000 farmers sell over 20,000MT of commodities to large, medium and small scale buyers across the country.   In December 2018, AgroCenta won a grant of $250,000 from GSMA Ecosystem Accelerator Fund to further build its financial inclusion platform AgroPay targeted at rural smallholder farmers.