Technology
Reducing the Cost of MicroInsurance
One of the key challenges in providing affordable microinsurance to the poor is keeping transaction costs low. High transaction costs can easily make microinsurance products unaffordable to the mass market in the developing world.
Reducing the transaction cost of insurance is made possible through the use of our in-house computer system called AMARA.
AMARA is built on technology supplied by Temenos, one of the world's leading suppliers of technology to the financial services sector and has been specifically built and tailored to the needs of processing large volumes of policy and claim information whilst keeping overheads to a minimum.
We are constantly expanding our system functionality. We have partnered with Idiom Software to greatly enhance our capabilities by building their innovative and award winning "business decision" software into the heart of our product configuration engine. This allows us to bring new products to market even faster, and ensure they remain tightly tailored to the needs of the poor.
The ability to provide technology-driven solutions to achieving low-cost microinsurance products encourages insurance companies into the market, which in turn leads to scale and sustainability for both insurer and insured.
From Grants to Commercial Funding
Richard Leftley shares his thoughts with Devex about when grant funding should be replaced by more commercial forms of funding.
M-Insurance Expands to Tanzania
MicroEnsure’s remarkable new M-Insurance product in Ghana reached more than 250,000 people within six months. Its success convinced MicroEnsure’s partners to expand the service into Tanzania.
The Presidents Column
I am delighted to report that at the end of September 2011 we were serving over a million people in Africa. This statistic is all the more remarkable when you consider that it is ten times the number we were covering just 12 months ago!
