Duo creates digital solution for Kenya’s insurance ecosystem

The revolution around the digital economy is gradually gaining momentum in Kenya, and traditional business models are fast being relegated to the trash bin as more transformational solutions get designed.

Every sector is witnessing a seismic drift towards adoption of emerging technologies, with millennial customer preferences being the key driver of changing market demands.

In the insurance sector, brick and mortar mindsets of doing business are becoming obsolete, as clients look for more efficient, quicker and trustworthy means to obtain cover for various policies.

On this realisation, two Nairobi-based innovators, Ms Bente Krogmann and Mr Chris Osore, came up with the idea of a mobile app towards the end of 2019, with the ultimate goal of revolutionising customer experience and eliminating the voluminous paperwork in the insurance ecosystem, and reaching the underserved.

“Today everything is happening in a rush. With such agile live-patterns and Covid-19 living among us, we need the ability to carry on with our daily lives while still on the go,” Ms Krogmann, a 32-year-old techpreneur told the Nation. 

Together, the business partners have concocted mTek, an app that allows users to select insurance services from various underwriters such as ICEA Lion, GA Insurance, Mua Insurance, Mayfair, Madison, Resolution and AAR.

“We more or less cover the whole general insurance scope from motor, personal accident, domestic, medical, evacuation, fire, international and local travel and school,” said Mr Osore.

Contrary to traditional insurance cover registration that takes several days and requires too many photocopies of identity documents in paper form, registering on the app takes a maximum of 6 minutes.

Alex Karanja, who has used the service in the past 5 months, says it took him 5 minutes to download the app, register, select a cover and pay for it.

“It is less than 10mbs in size so downloading it from Playstore is fast. I chose evacuation cover to give it a try. I filled in my details and paid Sh1550 for the annual cover via M-Pesa on the same app. The cover was then sent to my email. I loved the speed,” he says.

He adds that the number of questions are fewer compared to those found in regular insurance registration processes, as only relevant ones are asked on the app, and that reduces the time you spent on the app, giving you time for other activities.

“Although the services are fantastic, I would advise that the number of insurers be increased. To achieve universal coverage, it is important that mTek partners with all insurance companies,” says the 26-year-old.

Users can also handle claims processing on the app and follow up on the same. Additionally, a 360-degree comparison tool is on course to allow clients to compare policies based on price and service, and make informed decisions.

Ms Krogmann, who is the chief executive says that with special focus on such insurance gaps, it inspires her to ride on Kenya’s high mobile penetration rate to boost the 3 percent insurance penetration rate.

“In order to have the whole ecosystem covered we have additionally developed an agent app which is free for agents so they can on-board their clients, manage them and reconcile their accounts,” she reveals.

With regard to motor insurance, mTek has developed an app for valuers which allows them to schedule appointments, file their reports and issue them. All three apps are interlinked.

“Underwriters can measure their user traffic and sales pertaining to the policies we are selling as a broker for them via a web portal,” Mr Osore adds.

Registered with the Insurance Regulatory Authority (IRA), the platform, which promises to “build for the uninsured” has more than 5,000 users with many clients mentioning convenience and accountability as the top two benefits.

“An innovative app. Also you could consider insurance for bodabodas as that is a mass market which I think needs descent insurance as they cause too many accidents,” remarks Tendai Karanja, a user.

Ms Krogmann says users love the digital processes which are very transparent, and “we process purchases and claims instantly.” Additionally, digital identity for Know Your Customer (KYC) needs have been integrated.

“Also the payment from clients done from within the app goes to the underwriter directly which is line with the Insurance Act.”

However the cost of the premiums is based on policies, but mTek tries to make flexible policy durations and payment terms in accordance with underwriter directives, allowing real-time notifications within the claims process.

But all this has not come easy. Connecting an agile mind-set of partners and staff with a fairly traditional industry was an exciting challenge to her.

“Also we had to practice to be patient and committed to the goal to digitise the insurance industry. We were developing for 2 years without the opportunity to launch something in the market – because we wanted to ensure all layers are covered. And it continues to be a working process,” she narrates.

Insurance in Kenya has always seemed to be left behind as the Fourth Industrial Revolution takes off, with an absolute lack of a digital perspective and the economic shockwaves of Covid-19 now exposing the same.

The future, she says, is bright for businesses that embrace technology, revealing that mTek now seeks to integrate Web3.0 – a machine learning understanding of data to provide a data-driven and semantic web, as well as the deployment of decentralized financial services on the app.

And with apps that have integrated payment systems being a soft target for hackers, Mr Osore says that cyber security has been at the core of the platform’s operations, from conception, design, coding to testing.

“We perform threat models at the beginning of each milestone and identify all the threats based on spoofing, tempering, repudiation, information disclosure, denial of service and elevation of privileges,” he explains.

In bolstering security, digital certificates (commonly known as SSL/x.509 certificates) with at least 4095-bit encryption are used. This ensures security of data records as they pass through the different networks between the client devices and servers.

But digital certificates only guarantee information privacy, and do not protect other metadata such as the Internet Protocol addresses from preying attackers.

“To seal that loophole, we use Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) that ensure the entire communication tunnel is secured.”

As Industry 4.0 unfolds, the creation of digital solutions has been on a sharp rise in ‘Silicon Savannah’, which has been a leading digital economy powerhouse in Africa, with Covid-19 acting as a catalyst to digital transformation.​