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Tailored Insurance For Almond FarmersWe have applied our argonomic modeling expertise to develop a specialty product focused on protecting almond growers against increasingly unpredictable weather patterns. Either as an alternative or supplement to your existing insurance, CropAssure Almond provides easy to understand policies, and pays out automatically when your covered risks occur.

We design and deliver best in class agriculture index insurance products to protect farmers

Pula handles end to end management of the delivery of insurance to farmers, including field operations, farmer onboarding/education and claims assessment and payouts.

However, PULA’s research showed that registration was not as simple in practice. Because customers had to go through several steps on their phones, they found the registration process to be cumbersome. More importantly, research showed that customers wanted more than simplicity. Most agents and smallholders hesitated to sign up for the insurance after simply reading about it. And input agents, who are often trusted, face-to-face sources of information, did not make enough of an effort to explain the product. PULA often told agents that, by informing customers that their input purchases were insured, they were likely to increase sales, but this proved to be an inadequate incentive.

Created in 2017, Bismart is a leading Kenyan insurance aggregator, leveraging on digital platforms and technologies to connect customers to the best insurance and investments solutions available in the market. It offers clients education and the ability to compare and buy premier insurance and investment solutions at the convenience of their palms. Bismart secured incubation from Standard Chartered and Strathmore University’s Women in Tech Programme.

Enhancing the Customer Experience with InsurTech Financial service companies understand the demand for mobile. PwC’s recent FinTech Survey notes the significant growth in customers using mobile applications by 2020, and 75% of respondents say the most important impact FinTech will have is an increased focus on the customer.   Similar to FinTech, InsurTechs have many advantages insurance companies can leverage. These lean startups are free from legacy products and processes; they can use emerging technologies to build brand new systems; they can target specific value pools instead of offering lengthy end-to-end solutions that don’t meet everyone’s needs. Overall, InsurTech’s can go to market entirely different than traditional insurance companies. By partnering with InsurTech enterprises, insurers can offer:   Enriched Connectivity. Artificial intelligence (AI) solutions can eliminate friction at several touch points in the customer journey. Chatbots will be able to understand and act on customer queries at any time. With deep learning, chatbot solutions can further interpret sentiment to identify when to introduce a human agent.

Drought spells disaster for many farmers in the developing world as most lack crop insurance. No rain means no income, no food and not enough resources to replant the next year.

Last year we predicted partnerships between banks, insurers and fintechs. We saw a couple of notable events: the joint venture between Capitec and Easy Equities where Capitec is offering Easy Equities to its client base. The game changer in the payments space was Vodacom partnering with Alipay, although recent regulatory developments in China around fintech could hamstring these efforts. Standard Bank bought Tradesafe, a digital escrow services provider. OUTsurance and Shoprite partnered to offer funeral and life insurance to Shoprite customers. Telkom Business partnered with fintech startup, Fundrr, to offer loans to businesses wanting to grow.

Last year we predicted partnerships between banks, insurers and fintechs. We saw a couple of notable events: the joint venture between Capitec and Easy Equities where Capitec is offering Easy Equities to its client base. The game changer in the payments space was Vodacom partnering with Alipay, although recent regulatory developments in China around fintech could hamstring these efforts. Standard Bank bought Tradesafe, a digital escrow services provider. OUTsurance and Shoprite partnered to offer funeral and life insurance to Shoprite customers. Telkom Business partnered with fintech startup, Fundrr, to offer loans to businesses wanting to grow.

Two weeks ago a Kenyan fintech provider PULA was among 20 finalists pitching at the Singapore Fintech Festival. The presentation by the CTO Sitati Kituyi was selected among the winners, enabling the company to walk away with a cash prize of USD 50,000, getting an exclusive opportunity for networking with investors and a fast-tracked application for the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) Financial Sector Technology and Innovation (FSTI) Proof-of-Concept Scheme. Pula ‘restructures agricultural insurance and seeks to use technology to insure the previously unbanked, uninsured and untapped market of smallhodlers across the globe. It facilitates crop and livestock insurance coverage and works with Fortune 500 companies, global NGOs, research institutions, and governments to help provide smallholders the protection they need in an increasingly unpredictable market.’ The finalists who eventually pitched for the Global Fintech Hackcelerator were selected through two parallel scouting programmes. The local programme which aimed to tackle problem statements originating from the financial industry in Singapore and the broader Asia region saw 10 winners shortlisted from among 200 submissions by companies across 30 countries.

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.

“It’s about using insurance to get rid of risk for these farmers and unlock opportunities for them,” Chris says. He says that research found that for farmers who received insurance (rather than cash grants) borrowed and invested more in their farms.

The company was recognized for successfully managing over 4.3 million smallholder farmers through their Area Risk Index and yield insurance product. It provides insurance services and digital solutions to farmers in Africa. The company uses the crop cut experiment as a claim assessment procedure. This assessment relies heavily on ground crop cuts and it’s fed on mobile apps which relay instant feedback to clients. 

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.

“I hope that Pula continues in the future and that we can continue to improve our future through its benefits.” Festus Mutio, farmer, Kitui County, Kenya

Zineb Drissi-Kaitouni, CEO and Co-Founder of DabaDoc said, “We are at the inception of a disruption in the way healthcare is delivered. Having AXA as a shareholder adds an important dimension to our mission of democratizing access to healthcare. We are excited about further growth prospects with this partnership and the expertise provided by AXA in our current and future markets."Philippe Rocard, CEO of AXA Insurance Morocco said, "In the midst of a digital revolution in Morocco, customer expectations are rapidly evolving. AXA is therefore committed to transforming its role of indemnity payer into a partner facilitating the lives of its customers thanks to its services. As such, we are happy to contribute to the growth of DabaDoc, an amazing Moroccan startup. DabaDoc offers innovative services in the healthcare space, especially by facilitating patient journeys.”

• Agreement signed on 12 September 2018 introducing Axa as DabaDoc’s first institutional shareholder

• The capital raise will help enhance the company’s footprint in its existing geographies and further develop its offering