BimaLab – Neo Insurers Training Initiative

NITI will involve training of selected incumbent insurance companies with intended development of a digital insurer and digital sandbox concept in Nigeria. In Africa, risk markets remain nascent, competition minimal, and incumbents sluggish at innovating. Many incumbent insurance companies use the term “digital transformation” to refer to any initiative that uses digital technology to conduct business however most of these companies are still far from implementing digital solutions. The goal of the training initiative is to push incumbent traditional insurer to become a digital insurer through development of an innovation hub within the company. The innovation hub will apply digital sandbox mechanisms to test the solutions with targeted interactions from the regulator

Watch the interview: Insurtchs in Kenya: Insurtchs aims expands reach of insurance in Kenya

BimaLab West Africa

BimaLab is a platform that will be hosted by the insurance regulators with the support of FSD Africa, that attracts, inspires and organises key players and disruptors across the financial industry and technologies to collaborate on ground-breaking, innovative insurance products and services. The overall goal of the program is to create an Insurtech ecosystem for growth and strategic partnerships.

The program has the following objectives:

• Foster innovation that can extend access to insurance products and services to communities and businesses that are historically underserved or excluded.
• Turn validated insurance-focused ideas to market and investor-ready
• Provide innovators with an enabling regulatory environment for developing their ideas, including support in starting out, training, mentorship, and coaching.
• Facilitate the effective exchange of information relating to deepening access to financial services and opportunities for entrepreneurs across Africa.
• Create new networks and strengthen existing networks leading to strategic partnerships

Watch the interview: Insurtchs in Kenya: Insurtchs aims expands reach of insurance in Kenya

Digital Financial Innovation Platform

This intervention aims to increase the number of accessible and affordable insurance products across Sub-Saharan Africa, through the active development of insurtech ecosystems. The mechanism for achieving this is an online Digital Innovation Platform – creating a digitally-based ecosystem that enables the next-generation of insurtechs to develop a pipeline of scalable, regionally replicable use cases. The platform will be a ‘one-stop innovation shop’, with an ecosystem of insurtech partners using the online space to connect, collaborate, host events, ideate,incubate and accelerate viable ideas, store content and learn.

To pilot the project , we have worked on creating a digital BimaLab- an incubation program for insurtechs , to allow the program to continue to support the startups beyond the lifetime of the incubation cycle through engagement with incumbents, regulators, mentors and investors.

Geothermal Risk Transfer Facility

The programme will leverage local insurance capital to de-risk renewable energy development and thereby catalyse private investment into green energy projects in Africa. This will be done through establishing a joint underwriting facility, backed by East African insurers, to initially cover the early-stage development drilling risk for investors in geothermal projects. Furthermore, this underwriting facility should further develop to cover other speciality risks in the renewable energy sector and the broader climate mitigation & adaptation sector in Africa.

The programme will implement the following work:

1. Technical capacity development and facilitation of East African insurance sector stakeholders
2. Advocacy and technical assistance on regulatory adaptation
3. Support to structuring and execution of a joint underwriting facility
4. Advocacy and technical support to fundraising from African investors for geothermal investment

Lagos Flood Resilience

The megacity of Lagos is extremely vulnerable to flooding, but Lagos State Government’s management of flood risk is currently inadequate. A significant shortcoming is the almost complete non-utilisation of market-based financial instruments to increase resilience. This dismisses the important contribution that the private financial sector can make to risk reduction (through investment in resilient infrastructure) and risk management (e.g. through insurance).

FSD Africa is supporting Lagos State Government (LASG) in utilising financial markets instruments to improve flood resilience by collaborating with commercial financial sector stakeholders. These instruments will enable disaster risk reduction (DRR, through investment in resilient infrastructure) and disaster risk financing (DRF, e.g. insurance).

FSD Africa’s support to Lagos State Government along two major lines:

1. Development and implementation of a Flood Resilience Finance Framework and Policy for Lagos State. This will define the role of the financial sector and its instruments in flood risk management.
2. Support to financial transactions (infrastructure investments, risk transfer) by businesses or public sector that would significantly improve the state’s flood resilience.

FSD Africa is collaborating closely with the Office of the Governor of Lagos State, and with several businesses in various sectors (e.g. financial sector, waste management) as well as specialist advisers and NGOs.

Nairobi Declaration on Sustainable Insurance

The Nairobi Declaration on Sustainable Insurance was launched by UN Environment Programme’s Principles for Sustainable Insurance Initiative (PSI) during the 4th PSI African Market Event on 22 April 2021. The event was hosted by ICEA LION Group and supported by Financial Sector Deepening Africa (FSD Africa) and African Risk Capacity. It was  established to mobilise the Africa insurance industry to support the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The Nairobi Declaration will bring together local and international Insurance firms to promote the achievement of SDGs, and make it easier for them to understand the commitment to support the achievement of the SDGs.

National Insurance Commission (NAICOM)

FSD Africa will conduct technical assistance to enhance NAICOM’s ability to fulfil its development, regulation and supervision mandate to support market development, market stability promoting innovation, and protection of policyholders. We will support market development for innovation and strengthen regulatory and supervisory frameworks in line with international standards by developing a risk-based capital framework. The technical assistance will focus on the following:

1. Support on Insurance Market Development to establish a framework for promoting innovation in the insurance industry.
2. Support on Risk-Based Capital framework development