100% tax relief to Kenyans earning Ksh24, 000 and below.Pay as you earn (PAYE) reduction from a maximum of 30% to 25%.Reduction of turnover tax rate from 3% to 1% for all micro, small and medium enterprises.Reduction of resident income tax to 25%.The Government to make available Ksh10 billion to vulnerable groups including the elderly and orphans, among others. This, the president, said will be done through cash transfers from the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection.

The country has seen skyrocketing mobile penetration rates, with subscriptions surpassing the total population amount by 12%, and FinTech innovations have followed. For example, the telecommunications giant Safaricom, which contributes 5% of the county’s GDP, led the push in 2007 with its M-Pesa money transfer service, which functions much like a limited mobile bank but without the need for an Internet connection. M-Pesa combines Safaricom’s mobile infrastructure with an agent model; Safaricom stores their balance and customers can go to one of 110,000 agents throughout the country to conduct transactions in person. The whole system runs on technology similar to text messaging, and has expanded to seven countries.

APIs are the core of every digital strategy Digital transformation has made it possible to scale up things that used to be difficult to expand. Partnering, integrating, or reselling used to require hard work by everyone involved. As a result of digital transformation, an increasing share of business processes is digital so these things can be done far more quickly and more efficiently. 

Cloud computing The banking, payment and insurance industries rely heavily on the outsourcing of various operational processes to cloud computing service providers (eg, Amazon, Google and Microsoft). The increasing reliance of the European financial sector on foreign entities has recently given French and European regulators cause for concern. In 2017, the European Banking Authority (EBA) published its "Recommendations on Outsourcing to Cloud Service Providers. These recommendations were later included in the update of the EBA Guidelines on Outsourcing Arrangements (EBA/GL/2019/02), which are fully implemented at the national level by the Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority (ACPR). The EBA guidelines require banking and financial institutions to enter into written agreements with their service providers (including cloud service providers). These agreements should notably include provisions detailing the reporting obligations of the service provider and the audit rights of the competent authorities. In practice, the main cloud service providers are reluctant to enter into agreements which comply with the requirements of the EBA guidelines. This has prompted French and European banking and financial institutions to report these issues to their regulators. This review could lead to the drafting of a European regulation or directive determining standard contractual provisions which would be mandatorily included in agreements with cloud service providers.

PaperlessE-KYC, E-sign and stamping, and finally e-policies are making steady inroads,and with the changing mind-set, the time is not far off when insurance will be purchased instantly with no physical paper exchange. Automated claim processing and upload of documents from anywhere anytime is becoming a reality that will help in processing claims faster.Further, the proposed central repository for KYC and Digi lockers will also help all financial institutions to access the KYC records of a customer centrally as well as allow them to e-sign documents. A platform that allows you to provide your customers with all these facilities and more in a highly secure manner can make life much simpler, not to mention faster.

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.

PROMOTE Find the most effective channel for your niche In consideration of some financial constraints, fintech companies must distribute their content in the channel where they’ll reach their target audience – and this may not necessarily be the most popular channel. For example, Facebook may have 2.3 billion active users but most of your customers might be a certain type of professional who mostly hang out on LinkedIn, then that may be the best channel for you. Some fintech companies find traction in Reddit, while others are big on Telegram. Find an online space where most of your customers go to seek solutions and tailor your content to reach them.

Latest figures put the value of the cryptocurrency market at almost $240bn in 2019, nearly double the 2018 figure of $128bn. Could this mean that the global crypto market is starting to move into the mainstream? Significantly, the sector is enjoying rapid growth globally, with the UK, Nigeria, Australia, Canada, Mexico and India all experiencing a recent surge in users. Crypto is also starting to attract interest from institutional investors, which see it as possible insurance against the global rise in quantitative easing.

One more point has to do with the way a FinTech makes its revenues per customer, and net income is the figure to look out for here. This means that the more sources of revenues a company holds, the better it is for it. If we think of some of the best-known FinTechs, they gather their net income from interchange fees, ATM withdrawals, which can diminish during the pandemic, but gathering revenues from other sources such as lending, investing, or again from referring customers to third-party services, and earning commissions from these referrals.

Create a data strategy that takes advantage of existing business data.“Democratize” the data—make it available to all within the business.Engage in a conscious process to shift the organization’s culture to one that is data driven.Bolster the culture change by quickly building examples of insights derived from data and establishing KPIs for data science.Establish standards for data governance, security, and privacy.

Focus on your customers’ pain pointsSenior Solution clearly identified many of its customers’ pain points and tweaked its offering to help customers overcome them. Among the difficulties customers faced were a fragmented and large number of suppliers. This lack of integration created compliance problems and compatibility issues due to the company having multiple platforms. Also, no end to end solution existed. Different systems existed for bonds, equities, foreign exchange, front and back office, and more. In addition there were specificities from the Brazilian context that complicated dealings with banks such as a high level of inflation: traditional systems cannot handle so many digits, for example. And, previously there were complex methods for computing interest rates on interbank loans. All of these issues added up to be a hassle for customers who had to deal with them manually before Senior Solution introduced a way to ease the process.

One such disruption is the rising industry of crowdfunding, which involves a platform, an individual or entity in need of funding, and a community of people willing to collectively contribute these funds in exchange for rewards and recognition. The amount of money raised by crowdfunding platforms during 2012 is expected to reach $2.8 billion, up 91% since 2011.

Financial Services firms may be unaware that their disruption responses are often hindered by internal bias or superficial analysis. That is, Fintechs may not be completely redefining an industry, product, or experience, but rather innovating in certain areas of high-perceived customer value: CX innovation – ease of use and/or reducing friction or increasing speed of the purchase process Product innovation – editing product features or modifications or reducing cost Market innovation – creating entirely new experiences or approaches for solving customer issues

The world’s leading fintechs are using crowdfunding to cement and enhance their relationship with their customers. The latest Unicorns report from Beauhurst, an independent analysis firm, identifies the UK’s 21 unicorn companies – those worth $1bn (around £760m) or more. Of the 21, six are fintechs, and two are digital banks: Monzo and Revolut. Both have turned to crowdfunding – at a time when they are the darlings of the tech scene and its investors – to raise capital. 

Every year, we work to reach around 1 million small farmers with the resources they need to diversify and improve their crops, increase their incomes, and become more resilient in the face of a rapidly changing climate.   Our vision is that small farmers have greater agency over their livelihoods. This means access to the insurance, advice and resources they need to generate enough profit to feed their families and thrive. By supporting Pula, we continue to take steps in this direction — a world in which all small farmers can rest assured their livelihood is safe and they have what they need to prosper and grow.

“We hope that the high-quality yield and satellite data available today will enable local insurers and Pula Advisors to create an innovative yield predictive model that decreases the cost of area yield index insurance. At the end of the day, we want to make this product more accessible to smallholder families, allowing them to invest with more confidence and increase their yields,” said Emilio Hernandez, who leads CGAP’s work with smallholders.

Pula’s mission is to give farmers confidence by providing risk mitigation. Our solutions protect a farmer’s investment by pairing it with insurance. We build business cases to persuade Fortune 500 companies, seed and fertilizer suppliers, lending institutions, and governments in Africa, that embedded insurance will help deliver better results for both businesses and food security.

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.

Their Founders work in agriculture insurance has been recognized by several international awards including the Financial Times/IFC Award for Sustainable Finance. They work with Fortune 500 Companies, Global NGO’s, Microfinance Instructions, Research Institutions, and Governments to help provide smallholders the protection they need in an increasingly unpredictable climate.

Across Pula’s eight African markets, insurance penetration rates are typically less than 5 percent. Pula innovates to improve this. The farmers realize that insurance is useful, but they are not willing to pay its upfront cost.