Emerging Practices in Mobile Microinsurance
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Emerging Practices in Mobile Microinsurance Camilo Téllez Contents 1 Introduction 1 What is Microinsurance? 2 The Promise of Mobile Microinsurance 3 What are MNO Assets that can be Leveraged to Provide Microinsurance? 7 The Global Landscape of Microinsurance Products 10 Further Reading Acknowledgements: The author would like to thank the following individuals and organisations for providing valuable context for this paper. Special thanks to Richard Leftley at MicroEnsure, Jeremy Leach at Hollard Insurance, Craig Churchill at the ILO’s Microinsurance Innovation Facility, Mathilda Ström at BIMA, Doubell Chamberlain at CENFRI, Nathan Wyeth at Frontline:SMS Credit, Pooja Kumar at EKO, Mike McCaffrey at UNDP’s Pacific Financial Inclusion Programme, Nina Schuler at Leapfrog Labs and to the teams at MTN Ghana, Tigo Honduras, Globe Gcash, Smart Philippines and Telenor Pakistan. 1—2 GSMA — Mobile Money for the Unbanked Emerging practices in mobile microinsurance Introduction The Promise of Mobile Microinsurance Depending on the implementation, leveraging the mobile infrastructure for microinsurance can benefit operators, insurers, and customers in a variety of beneficial ways. Figure 1 Microinsurance is insurance for people with The mobile platform, including mobile low incomes, giving poor people the ability to money, can be used as a tool to reduce the Mobile operators manage risks in their lives.1 It is not, however, costs of microinsurance and to help it to widely available. Why is insurance easily scale. The objective of this paper is to outline New products Competitive Increased New revenues accessible to those in the developed world, the opportunities for leveraging the mobile differentiation ARPU but not the poor—whose demand for insurance, channel, including mobile money, to deliver given how close they live to the economic microinsurance, and to share examples of brink, is arguably greater? The answer is attempts to do so from around the world.2 We Increased simple: transaction costs. The cost of selling and hope that readers from both the mobile industry acquisition underwriting insurance and of administering and the insurance industry will find in these a claim does not decrease in proportion to the pages new ideas for collaboration that will make value of the policy. Using traditional channels risk-management tools available to those who Increased and processes, insurance companies simply most need them. loyalty cannot write policies with values below a certain (reduced churn) floor without pricing them unrealistically. Moreover, microinsurance is a low-cost, high- volume business; therefore, scale is crucial. Insurers More effective Penetration into New revenues product design new customer What is Microinsurance? segments Improved distribution Microinsurance aims to cover lives and protect At the time of writing, figures released by Lloyds Reduced More affordable the assets of low-income individuals and families and the Microinsurance Centre estimate that transaction costs premiums from natural disasters, illness, death, accidents there are over 135 million people worldwide and crop failure amongst others. By doing so, it who are covered by microinsurance. The total enables low-income individuals to manage their market size is vastly larger, amounting to 1.5 to Greater Reduced costs risks better by providing them with a safety net 3 billion policies.4 back-office efficiency that can stop them from falling back into poverty. It often refers to the subset of insurance products The role of intermediaries Fraud reduction that are characterised by low premiums and low coverage limits, on the assumption that these suit Besides MNOs and insurance companies the needs of low-income people. themselves, there are a number of niche players emerging as specialists in bridging the gap Customers Mobile microinsurance has been defined as “any between insurance companies and mobile type of microinsurance product which leverages network operators. Companies like MicroEnsure, 1. Protecting the Poor: A Microinsurance the mobile channel, regardless of the existence More affordable Increased Reduced Greater resiliency Compendium, edited by Craig Trustco, and Bima have been instrumental in and flexible adoption of exposure to risk in the case of Churchill (available at http://www. of a mobile money platform to improve a part building some of the innovative propositions premiums microinsurance adverse events microinsurancecompendium.org/) of the insurance value chain which can include: 2. The mobile channel can equally be used described in this note. product design, pricing, marketing and sales, to reduce the cost of delivering traditional Faster claims (i.e., not micro-) insurance, but we will not policy administration and claims payment.”3 discuss these uses here. settlement 3. “M-Insurance: The Next Wave of Mobile Financial Services?” by Jeremy Leach (available at http://www.microensure.com/ news.asp?id=47&start=5) Easier policy 4. Insurance in Developing Countries: Exploring Opportunities in Microinsurance, administration Lloyd’s 360° Risk Insight (available at http://www.lloyds.com/~/media/ Lloyds/Reports/360%20Other/ InsuranceInDevelopingCountries.pdf) ARPU: Average revenue per user 3—4 GSMA — Mobile Money for the Unbanked Emerging practices in mobile microinsurance What are MNO Assets that Communication channels Retail sales and distribution MNOs control a range of communication Insurance providers can leverage the existing channels that can support the promotion and distribution network of airtime dealers and/or sales of and enrolment in insurance policies. mobile money agents as a low-cost sales can be Leveraged to Provide They can also allow insurers to handle routine channel. These agents can help explain customer enquiries and account management. a product to customers who might not be Finally, they can be used to streamline claims familiar with insurance, in addition to serving handling, which is one of the most important Microinsurance? 5 as a channel for notifications, claims handling parts of the value chain to client. and even disbursement. Voice is the most obvious of these channels, Using existing airtime retailers and/or mobile and it is widely used by insurers today to money agents network may build trust in Assets controlled by MNOs can help insurers Figure 2, below, summarises the ways that communicate with clients. SMS is more complex insurance, since customers are often familiar reach customers in low-premium environments. insurers can leverage the MNOs’ communication to implement—typically requiring integration with these retailers already.6 However, caution is MNOs have large physical and virtual networks channels, retail distribution networks, and with an SMS aggregator—but it can be an required. In order for customers to understand with the potential to reach significant numbers of payment mechanisms; in this section, we discuss extremely cost-effective channel for, for example, exactly what they are buying, the sales channel clients, including the unbanked, at low cost. each of these assets in turn. reminding customers when premium payments needs to be appropriately trained. MNOs have are due, because sending such reminders can be learned the hard way that the agent training for entirely automated. The USSD (Unstructured the provision of a mobile money service can be Supplementary Service Data) protocol allows for Figure 2 a challenge. Finding the right incentives is also secure, interactive sessions that can be suitable complex. If agents are overcompensated for The microinsurance value chain for policy enrolment and administration, and selling policies, they may resort to unsavoury it is accessible on even very low-end handsets. tactics to do so; if their compensation is Relevant mobile Product design Marketing Sales Client Policy Claim Claim payment However, insurers must typically negotiate and pricing enrollment administration processing insufficient, on the other hand, they probably infrastructure directly with mobile operators in order to gain won’t bother investing the time it takes to access to this channel. Communication Insurers can Customers can Insurers can Customers can educate customers about the product. channels promote their self-enrol over handle routine submit claims ■ Voice services using the air customer over the air In some countries, there are rules which specify ■ Regular and premium SMS mobile inquiries over In 2011, MTN Ghana, Hollard who is allowed to sell insurance. This can restrict ■ USSD communication the air Insurance, MicroEnsure, the ability of insurers and MNOs to exploit third- and MFS Africa launched an Retail sales and Airtime dealers Airtime dealers party retailers as a sales channel. microinsurance product called “mi-Life,” which distribution and mobile and mobile ■ Airtime dealers money agents money agents is available on MTN’s MobileMoney platform. ■ Mobile money agents can educate can distribute As the name suggests, “mi-Life” provides users Payment mechanisms customers about and accept with the opportunity to buy life insurance via microinsurance enrolment forms their mobile phones via the USSD channel. The Collecting premiums is a major challenge for the same interface used to purchase the insurance microinsurance industry. Customers in the target can then be used to change its attributes, Payment mechanisms Customers can Insurers can market often have irregular and unpredictable tailoring the insurance package to suit the ■ Pre- and post-paid pay premiums disburse