The Ghana Innolab Insurtech Accelerator Programme was held on Friday, 29th of April, at the Marriott Hotel in Accra. The event was hosted in partnership with accelerator partners: National Insurance Commission, GIZ Ghana, UK Aid, FSD Africa, Starlife Insurance and powered by Tellistic Technology Services Mobile Web Ghana, BFA Global.
The goal of the InnoLab Insurtech Accelerator Programme is to help grow stage insurtech companies to strengthen their existing product and help them to increase their penetration within the Ghanaian market and beyond. The programme was virtual and ran for ten weeks after which, it was climaxed with a Demo Day. Some of the topics which were treated were:
- Building a Successful Business Model
- Digital Transformation Journey of Prudential Assurance
- Customer Acquisition in Underserved Markets
- Product Development and Product Roadmapping
- Storytelling
- Data Policies in Ghana
- The Path to Scale
- Demystifying Funding Strategies
- Building Organizational Capacity
- Engaging Investors
The selected companies pitched their specific innovation solutions aimed at bringing social and commercial value in the insurance industry. The program brought together key guest speakers from the insurance industry in Ghana,the cohorts, partners of the project and high profile personalities from the insurance ecosystem in Ghana and beyond.
There was a good representation of diversity among the selected cohorts with regards to the insurance value chain. They included the claim management, marketplace, group policies, no-code/low code insurtech platforms,operations, digital transformation as well as the blockchain/agriculture climate sector. There were also a few cohort members coming from other countries who were specifically looking at penetrating into the Ghanaian market.
The program had a range of keynote speakers from the various partnering organizations who spoke on various topics pertaining to the insurance industry. Some of these speakers were: Mr. Michael Kofi Andoh (Deputy Commissioner of Insurance -National Insurance Company), Ms. Patience Arko Boham (Principal Economic Officer and Head of Insurance and Pensions Unit -Ministry of Finance), Mr. Danny Quinn , Economic Advisor, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office,UK High Commission), Mr. Elias Mundi (Senior Manager-Risk Regulations, FSD Africa), Ms. Rita Korley, (Data executive- Old Mutual Ghana) and Mr. Detlev Axel Jahn (Head of Programme for Sustainable Economic Development, GIZ).
After the various presentations, the nine cohorts also gave a presentation of the insurtech solutions they have developed for the past weeks. The cohorts were:
- BeNew Insurance ( Focused on pushing insurance via group policies)
- BestQuote (Focused on the market place sector: A shopping platform for assessing , comparing options and finally buying motor, travel and property insurance via USSD and a mobile app).
- Democrance ( Focused on Operations Digital Transformation: a SaaS technology platform that helps with product distribution by digitizing the entire value chain from simple micro-insurance to automated underwriting for established underwriters )
- IBISA (Focused on the blockchain,agriculture,climate)
- Full Cycle ( Focused on the no-code/low code insurtech platform: A cloud-based,comparative e-trading insurance software platform which enables insurance companies, brokers,agents, their clients and members of the public to trade among themselves ).
- Anks and Co (Focused on educating people on insurance) * unfortunately had to drop out due to health issues.
- Perigee Insights ( Focused on claims management systems that report claims and users can see updates in real time
- LBH ( Focused on the agriculture sector)
- Figtech (focused on the marketplace sector: a customer-driven digital services platform that gives an ecosystem to purchase life insurance.
After the various presentations from the nine cohorts, there were three break out sessions which focused on the topics, Climate and Risk Adaptation, Business Process Innovation Accessibility and Customer centricity. At this stage, participants were given the opportunity to engage with the cohorts to have deeper insights about their projects.
The climax of the demo day was the announcement of the award winners for the cash prize of twenty thousand euros (20,000 euros). The top three teams were: IBISA, Figtech and BeNew Insurance. Each company got an amount of 20,000 euros to help them go to market and scale their business operations.
More than one hundred participants attended the event both online and offline.
The insurance industry is ready for new innovations, and products. We trust that these solutions will help bring the non-insurers to market and increase insurance penetration in Africa.