Female Techpreneur Creates an All-Inclusive Tech Insurance Platform for the Underserved
Written by Brandason, Strategic Communications Firm for the Tech By Her Accelerator, powered by MEST with support from the Tech Entrepreneurship Initiative, ‘Make-IT in Africa’, (implemented by Deutsche für Gesellschaft Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.
“When people stay for so long without a working solution, they either learn to do without or settle for inadequate solutions just to get by”
-Anne Wambui Kamau, CEO of CoverApp.
Nearly half of all health care spending is paid out of pocket in Sub-Saharan Africa (EY, 2018) with the educational and socioeconomic status of households playing a predominant role in deciding whether or not to enroll in health or any other kind of insurance.
In countries like Kenya, however, the rise of the mobile economy is making the country a testbed for innovations, and a new generation of African tech entrepreneurs are using this opportunity to improve the lives of Africans.
One of such pioneers is Anne Wambui Kamau, CEO of CoverApp, an Insurtech solution that enables users to purchase insurance and emergency services on-the-go via mobile phone.
Anne founded the CoverApp to empower informal sector workers, and low-income households while building their resilience against risks through accessible and affordable insurance cover.
Like most experienced insurance experts, CoverApp’s founder has a strong background in financial inclusiveness, which she leveraged in developing the app and other inclusive insurance solutions for Kenya and other Sub-Saharan Countries.
Anne’s journey began in CIC Insurance Kenya in 2003, where she was employed to develop the newly founded microinsurance business line and helped grow the business from Kes. 600,000 (USD 6,000) annual premiums to over Kes. 800 million (USD 8M), covering over 300,000 households from 2003 to 2012. Over time, Anne developed the skills and experience needed to design, prototype, and manage the distribution of inclusive digital insurance solutions in Kenya and other Sub-Saharan Countries.
To kickstart the project, Anne engaged in an extensive initial research project which revealed three main factors that were excluding the majority in the informal sector including MSMEs, from accessing mainstream insurance cover. They are:
(1)the complexity of existing solutions,
(2) inaccessibility to non-formal workers, and
(3) the dreary paperwork.
It was through this insight that Coverapp was developed, to address these specific barriers, and make the sourcing, buying, and management of insurance simple, accessible, and fun from the comfort of a mobile phone. Their biggest selling point is their ability to anticipate life’s emergencies and deliver services that lessen the inconvenience. In Anne’s own words, ‘We worry about the unexpected, so our clients don’t have to’.
Speaking about how receptive the Kenyan market was to the innovation, the founder says that ‘when people stay for so long without a working solution, they either learn to do without or settle for inadequate solutions just to get by’. This meant that despite the number of uninsured Kenyans in need of the solution, it was an uphill task for the startup to educate the market, and get them to buy into it. ‘For the most part, people thought our offers were too good to be true, which made them hesitant. But over time, more and more people are getting to see that we are genuine and we are seeing the gradual acceptance of the product in the increase in purchases from the app’. ’, Anne added.
CoverApp’s journey to becoming an award-winning brand was slow but steady. Like most young businesses, they did not start with investment from venture capitalists and had to bootstrap in order to get the ball rolling. ‘When we first conceptualized CoverApp, we did not have the in-house capacity to develop the app, so we outsourced to a developer who promised us results after six weeks of development time. But one year down the line, we still did not have an App. We ended up hiring another developer on a temporary contract to access what had been done. To our shock, the other developer had done very little tangible work despite our having paid a considerable amount! Long story short, we ended up hiring our own developer and started again from scratch. Within three months, we had a prototype for beta testing.’
CoverApp’s first clients were friends and family, of the team, before they launched a simple digital campaign to introduce the App to the wider public.
‘They say the journey of 1000 miles begins with the first step. We took that first step and learned along the way that it is best to take action with what we could mobilize internally rather than wait for all the stars to align. The trick is to be persistent, and not give up when the going gets tough’, says Anne about how she gathered the courage to start her business.
For CoverApp, continuous innovation is essential to remaining relevant. That is why they developed their app to be an end to end solution integrating directly with their partner underwriters and financial institutions for real-time data sharing. They go a step further by offering custom made solutions to their clients, in addition to the ones offered by their partners.
As a female tech founder, we asked Anne what it’s like to run a tech business. With a smile, she said ‘I am treated with respect and admiration for how far I’ve come and for what I aim to achieve within the next five years — become the go-to application for sourcing, purchase, and management of insurance and other emergency solutions not only in Kenya but the entire region, complemented by a fully operational contact center.’
In fact, the founder’s philosophy to success and achieving her goals is simple ‘ if something needs to be done, then get it done’. This involves having the right team and leadership skills to accomplish the vision which, for Anne, involved oscillation between authoritarianism and democratic leadership depending on the situation. ‘I have a strong personality that can sometimes appear domineering — this I have to consciously manage.’
It was in seeking out opportunities to improve her skills as an entrepreneur and leader that Anne applied for the Tech By Her Accelerator program, a three-month industry-agnostic program for ten (10) female founders of early-stage tech companies in Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria. The program fuels growth among female-led businesses by recognizing and maximizing the unique strengths of the female entrepreneur and equipping them with the needed knowledge, tools, and resources to scale and sustain their businesses in a competitive environment. The program recognizes that the diversified use of tech in the industry has gone a long way in creating a more gender-inclusive and balanced world and seeks to empower women who have ventured into the industry to aim higher and go global.
InsurTech Founders like Anne are using technology in making a significant contribution to the African risk mitigation space. As more opportunities like the Pre-MEST program and the Tech By Her Accelerator are created, we look forward to the development of a robust and thriving tech ecosystem on the continent for the betterment of all mankind.
