Country: Nigeria

Needed but not prioritised, relied upon but not trusted – these are just some of the perceptions that have characterised interactions with the insurance sector. The sector has been grappling with the challenge of delivering relevant products for a long time, especially to customers at the base of the economic pyramid.

Only 3% of Africa’s GDP is driven by insurance, which is less than half the world average of 7%. Yet, insurance provides a safety net from many external threats like natural disasters, health threats and economic disruptions.

This brings the question: why is there such a discrepancy, especially given Africa is no less exposed to many of the risks that insurance buffers against compared to the rest of the world? Remote locations, lower education levels and a lack of trust or experience with formal institutions have been key contributors to low insurance uptake in Africa.

According to McKinsey, Africa’s insurance industry is valued at about $68 billion in Gross Written Premium (GWP) whichbehind other emerging markets such as Latin America and the Caribbean. Uptake across the continent is also inconsistent with 91% of premiums concentrated in just ten countries; South Africa has the largest and most established insurance market and accounts for 70% of Africa’s premiums.

In Kenya, a 2019 report by the Insurance Regulatory Authority (IRA) showed that insurance penetration dropped from 3.44% to 2.34% over the last 9 years, an indication that the sector has not been successful at capturing the opportunities presented by the expanding economy.

These statistics clearly depict the protection gap that has left households and businesses vulnerable to shocks triggered by various risks.

Covid-19 has and is still placing significant pressure on the way the insurance business is conducted. The pandemic disrupted providers’ engagement with both regulators and consumers. A study by FSD Africa conducted in 2020 that took stock of the effect of COVID-19 across sub-Saharan Africa, showed that the sector ed to enhance digitalisation as the virus reduced mobility and social interaction amidst government-imposed restrictions. Digitising the sector would also improve access and efficiency of insurance products and services. Furthermore, the study showed that regulators also needed to adjust their service delivery processes of licensing, registration, data collection and product approvals by embracing new solutions.

The pandemic has without a doubt amplified the need to adopt regulatory technology (regtech) and supervisory technology (suptech) in enhancing the efficiency of reporting and supervision processes. There have been notable uptake in online distribution of products, customer-centric services such as the use of chatbots, mapping out trends, assessing risks, managing claims and even marketing. Bold start-up companies are behind some of these most ingenious innovations, with support from the sector’s long-standing players. For example, Lami, in partnership with more than 25 Kenyan underwriters, released its flagship mobile application in early 2020, enabling Kenyans to pay for insurance in instalments and pause coverage if they travel abroad. In addition, Bluewave and APA insurance recently launched an affordable digitally distributed health cover for low-income populations, costing less than USD 2 each month for a hospitalisation cash benefit and funeral expenses benefit of up to USD 500.

To leverage such innovations, Kenya’s Insurance Regulatory Authority, together with its partners, launched BimaLab, a pilot accelerator programme in 2020. The move is meant to enhance visibility and push for resources for talented insurtech founders of early to mid-stage start-ups. The programme will harness innovation for inclusion and enhanced access to insurance products and services with an aim of increasing insurance penetration in Kenya. The programme, now in its second phase and with FSD Africa’s involvement, has seen an increasing contribution of technology to insurance inclusivity through companies such as AiC Chamasure and Sprout.

AiCare is enabling motor insurers to conduct accurate motor insurance risk assessments. This is improving underwriting efficiency and reducing costs of insurance premiums. Chamasure has created a peer-to-peer microinsurance and savings platform which enables those who save through informal social groups to purchase insurance through the groups in case of death or accidents. Sprout Insure developed a faster claim processing solution for crop insurance making it easier for farmers to buy policies and receive timely pay-outs.

It is vital for regulators to balance the need to facilitate and promote innovation with the protection of consumers and the adequate management of the risks that may arise. In this regard, there are seven regulators across sub-Saharan Africa that are also shadowing the second phase of BimaLab programme with an aim of building an enabling regulatory environment. The programme will enable insurance regulators from Nigeria, Ghana, Rwanda, Uganda, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Kenya to adapt and evolve their supervisory processes to be more flexible and responsive to new innovations, technologies, and risks as and when they arise.

As technology advances in the insurance sector, it is important that regulators balance the need to promote innovation with the protection of consumers and the adequate management of the risks that may arise. In this regard, there are seven regulators across sub-Saharan Africa that are also shadowing the second phase of the BimaLab programme with the aim of building a regulatory environment that facilitates and welcomes innovation. The programme will enable insurance regulators from Nigeria, Ghana, Rwanda, Uganda, Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Kenya to adapt and evolve their supervisory processes to be more flexible and responsive to new innovations, technologies, and risks.

Insurtech is revolutionising an almost century-old insurance industry in Kenya, leading to its financial system becoming more accessible to low-income populations. With the trend being recorded across the globe, technology is reshaping the competitive landscape, challenging traditional structures to significantly improving access to insurance.

FSD Africa recognises the role Insurtech plays in increasing insurance penetration and coverage. Thus, we are exploring a pipeline of Digital innovation projects to support this Insurtech revolution and the reshaping of the African Insurance Industry.

Africa badly needs long-term finance. But to properly develop, long-term finance markets need data and in-depth data analysis. For years, this sort of market intelligence barely existed. But the work of the Africa Long-Term Finance Initiative gives hope that things are changing.

Why is long-term finance important?

The simple answer: sustainable growth. Longer-term investments support growth and development by reducing costs. That increases productivity and competitiveness and creates jobs – particularly for the 12 million young Africans joining the workforce every year.

But there are significant long-term finance gaps across African economies, especially in the infrastructure, housing and enterprise sectors. These industries are crucial to the continent’s economic recovery from Covid, but businesses in these sectors often find they’re asked to repay loans before the investment has had a chance to yield a return.

Long-term finance is also necessary to accelerate Africa’s green transition, asies and governments seek to reconcile economic development with climate change mitigation and adaptation.

How can data help?

One of the main reasons for the dearth of long-term finance in Africa is a lack of investor confidence. Investors feel exposed to liquidity and interest rate risks, and thus lack the appetite to provide anything more than short-term money.

This is largely due to a lack of market intelligence. Historically, there have been few – if any – benchmarks or indicators to go on when it comes to the performance of long-term finance in Africa. Without this knowledge, investors are reluctant to provide the necessary finance, for the necessary length of time for many businesses and projects to grow.

The deepening of domestic financial markets, with increased provision of financial products and services for all levels of society, is crucial to increase the availability of finance and deploy it more efficiently, and also to reduce exposure to foreign exchange risk – and this process es accurate data, too.

What is the Africa Long-Term Finance Initiative?

In 2017, a number of institutions, including FSD Africa, came together to fix this lack of market intelligence by launching the Africa Long-Term Finance Initiative.

The initiative’s objective is to close the financing gaps in the infrastructure, housing and SME sectors. The ways it does this is by improving market intelligence through collecting data, operating a country-comparison LTF Scoreboard, summarizing the data in regular reports on key findings, and providing in-depth country diagnostics

These products enhance transparency and provide benchmarks to assess the comparative levels of long-term finance markets across the continent. The Africa Long-term Finance Initiative Scoreboard presents data using different benchmarking techniques, providing a more detailed picture than a simple comparison of country averages. The country diagnostics provide additional country-specific quantitative and qualitative analysis, complementing the data presented in the Scoreboard.

In turn, these outputs are helpful to inform policymakers, the private sector and donors about the availability of long-term finance, boosting investor knowledge and confidence – and thereby catalysing new partnerships that strengthen focus on what’s needed to increase the availability of long-term finance.

In addition, by enabling comparison between countries, the LTF scoreboard is creating positive competition among national stakeholders, and further driving the availability of long-term finance.

The green finance opportunity

Long-term finance is closely linked to the green transition in Africa. Countries like Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa have taken the leadcreating programmes for green bonds, which tap into domestic and international capital markets to finance green projects.

The success of these initiatives and the increasing global demand for green investments have led other countries – like Ghana – to follow suit in considering green instruments as a way of attracting long-term finance.

Driving recovery through data

The economic impact of Covid-19 means it’s more urgent than ever to respond to the investment needs of African businesses. The progress made on market intelligence by the Africa Long-Term Finance Initiative is therefore particularly timely. By equipping and emboldening investors, it’s hoped that the initiative’s work will be the first building block in the development of a strong long-term finance market to power sustainable growth

Climate change is increasing extreme weather events, and Africa is greatly exposed. Drought, flooding, extreme heat and tropical cyclones are all major risks with the consequence that 30 of the world’s 40 most climate-vulnerable countries are in sub-Saharan Africa¹. Given Africa’s high dependence on its natural resources, with agriculture contributing 16% of the continent’s GDP and employing roughly 60% of the population, these climate extremes pose a very high risk in the continents’ economies and household livelihoods. In Kenya, for example, in the three drought years in 2009, 2010 and 2011, the drought cost the country 11%, 7% and 9% of its entire GDP.

At the same time, only 3% of global climate finance² finds its way to Africa to drive mitigation and adaptation. There is also a large protection gap with a very low percentage of African weather-related losses currently being insured. A specific example is Cyclone Idai which in 2019 affected Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe. Of t0bn losses, only 7% were covered by insurance³. As the frequency and severity of weather events increases, if more is not done to change this situation and increase resilience, then the cost of climate disasters will render sustainable development virtually impossible in Africa.

We thus face a major sustainable development crisis for which urgent action is required. The insurance industry has a vital role to play in responding to help drive both mitigation and adaptation.

Mitigation

Insurers are underwriters and asset managers of long-term capital and, in both capacities, can meaningfully contribute towards reaching net-zero carbon emissions.

As underwriters, insurers play an essential role in facilitating the flow of capital to mitigation projects through providing de-risking solutions to investors. For example, in the geothermal energy sector in East Africa, where capital intensive early-stage development drilling has a low probability/high severity risk profile, investors need risk transfer solutions to make the risk-return profile attractive. To address this barrier, FSD Africa is working on setting up a local underwiring pool that will provide de-risking solutions to enable the crowding-in of private capital to this important renewable energy source.

On the flip side, insurers can leverage their underwriting to reduce capital flows to the fossil fuel industry by making underwriting decisions using an ESG lens and not purely based on short-term commercial factors.

As managers of significant pools of long-term capital, insurers also have a critical role to play in the transition to a net-zero emissions economy through green investing.

The recently convened UN Net-Zero Insurance Alliance demonstrates the growing global momentum towards this.

Adaptation

The insurance industry is expert at managing complex long-term risks, and so when it comes to managing the unavoidable long-term consequences of a warming planet, the industry has much to contribute.

The starting point in managing risk is understanding it and having the right data and models to make informed decisions on how to respond. In simple terms, you need to know the likelihood of a hazard occurring, the direct financial losses it will cause and the indirect impacts (e.g. services disruption) that will result. Catastrophe models have been used for many years by insurers to model these types of impacts and price the risk. By incorporating climate risk modelling into these projections, insurers can help businesses and governments make informed decisions on what resilience initiatives to pursue.

Once risk is understood and evaluated, it needs to be managed. Investing in physical risk reduction measures (e.g. irrigation systems or flood defences) and pre-arranging risk finance are two important management options. The insurance industry is a key player in enabling both. For the necessary private finance to flow to resilient infrastructure, as with mitigation projects, risk transfer solutions underwritten by insurance companies are often required. And when it comes to pre-arranging risk finance, this is obviously the core of what the insurance industry offers. So, insurers making the necessary solutions available to individuals, businesses and governments is vital to ensuring climate resilience.

The way forward

One of the key global initiatives developed explicitly for the insurance industry is UNEP’s Principles for Sustainable Insurance (PSI). It focuses on sustainable insurance that reduces risk, develops innovative solutions, improves business performance, and contributes to environmental, social, and social-economic sustainability[1].

Given FSD Africa’s increasing focus on the role of finance in climate mitigation and adaptation, we have joined the UN Environment’s PSI initiative and will be directly supporting the implementation of the PSI global programme in Africa. FSD Africa was also a founding signatory to the recent Nairobi Declaration, which commits African insurance organisations to play the sustainability roles described in this article. We strongly appeal to all African insurance industry leaders is to also sign the Nairobi Declaration.  Let’s work together to leverage the collective financial might of the insurance industry towards a sustainable future.

<"#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1">[1] UNEP FI: PSI – Principles for Sustainable Insurance – a global sustainability framework and initiative of the UNEP Finance Initiative (2012)

¹ Notre Dame Research
² CPI, 2019
³ Swiss Re Institute,

This article was originally published by the East African on 16 March 2021.

Despite a total of US$ 22.6 bn in private equity and early stage venture capital having been raised for Africa between 2014 and 2019, investments in private equity today account for less than 1 percent of total pension assets for most countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

In contrast, globally, allocations to private assets such as private equity (PE), private debt (PD), real estate and infrastructure now make up around 26% of global pension fund assets, up from 19% in 2008. In the US for example, the number of publicly listed companies has dropped by about half, over the past two decades from 8,090 in 1996 to 4,397 in 2018.¹ The increasing ability of entrepreneurs to access private capital has encouraged a shift from public market capital-raising. Firms are also staying private for longer. If the trend witnessed globally where listings in public markets is anything to go by, then private capital markets are yet to reach their ull potential in Africa.

In Africa, private equity and private debt markets have hitherto been dominated by development finance institutions with very limited participation by domestic institutional investors. Although this may be sustainable in the short to medium term, it is imperative for long term sustainability to mobilize domestic institutional capital into the space. On aggregate pension funds remain the single largest institutional investors in Africa, the assets under management by pension funds currently stands at approximately USD 420 billion with total institutional investor assets standing at approximately USD 1 trillion.² A large chunk of these pension assets is however invested in traditional asset classes.

In 2019, FSD Africa in partnership with The East African Venture Capital Association (EAVCA) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) commissioned a market study to investigate the low uptake of PE investment by pension schemes in East Africa. The market study report cited knowledge gap on both pension fund and regulatory side and absence of regulatory oversight on the PE Fund Managers by local regulators as some of the key impediments for pensions seeking to invest in PE Funds. Although the scope of the study was limited to East Africa, these challenges are cross cutting across Africa.

In addition to these challenges noted by the study, the lack of appropriately designed structures or avenues for investment that address certain issues that may be unattractive for institutional investors such as the J-Curve effect, is also a key impediment to investment by institutional investors.

Despite the existence of provisions allowing pension funds to invest in private equity, the appetite by pension funds to invest in private equity has remained low and there is a case to be made for African institutional investors to gradually increase allocation to private markets. By making capital for ownership in or as credit to unlisted, privately owned companies, these markets can complement public markets in providing long-term financing for the transformation of African economies and the attainment of sustainable development goals.

African institutional investors and the continent stand to benefit greatly from increasing their investment in private capital markets. The benefits of investment in private capital markets are diverse, ranging from diversification benefits to participation in the social and real sectors. Such investments may provide investors (specifically institutional investors) with exposure to markets and investment strategies that cannot be accessed through traditional asset classes.

In addition to potential attractive risk-adjusted returns, private market investments allow clients to diversify their portfolios by investment strategy, portfolio manager, industry sector, geography and liquidity needs. Furthermore, private market investments facilitate active participation in the growth sectors of the real economy by investors thereby generating returns while contributing to broader economic development goals such as creation of jobs and improving access to basic services. This is because the link between private markets and social impact can be much more direct, more so because in most cases these are direct investments in companies that operate in the real sector.

Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has presented a fresh set of challenges especially for MSMEs. MSMEs have been exposed to significant stress leading not only to job losses but also balance sheet stress due to lack of long-term capital. In normal times, access to long-term finance for MSME sector is typically constrained, this has now been exacerbated by the pandemic. Expected volatility in public markets over the next few years will potentially impede the tapping of these markets by companies to raise money. This coupled with expected increased risk averseness by banks and other lending institutions is likely to create a greater challenge for MSMEs to access long-term finance. The private equity and debt markets are therefore expected to play an even greater role in financing COVID-19 recovery in support of these companies. In particular, private debt markets may provide greater flexibility in structuring solutions that meet the needs of both investors (institutional) and borrowers.

One of FSD Africa’s strategic imperative is to mobilize long term finance in local currency to fund Africa’s developmental priorities. As part of this imperative, FSD Africa is launching a multi-year, multi-country programme to support the development of private capital markets in Africa. The 4-year technical assistance programme will be implemented across Africa in partnership with regulators, policy makers, industry associations and other market operators. The objective of the programme is to support the development of private capital markets as a complement to the public capital markets in Africa.

Table: Low investment by African institutional investors in private equity

Source: Various regulatory agencies.

¹ Willis Towers Watson
² FSD Afric