MR Microinsurance_2012_03_29.indd - International Labour ...

532 Infrastructure and environment for microinsurance
Table 24.2 Technology in client enrolment and premium payment
Mobile phone for enrolment Smart card Airtime Mobile payment system
Characteristics Vendor uses GPS-enabled Value stored on
Premium payments Premium deducted
mobile mobile phone to register SIM cards can be
take place through from customer’s
customers and collect fi rst used to make predirect
deduction of air- m-wallet; payment
premium payment (in cash, mium payments
time; airtime then has thus made in form of
but receipt communicated
to be converted to cur- mobile money
to insurer insurer via mobile phone)
rency
Advantages Vendors (e.g. small-scale Payments can hap- hap-
Clients do not need No need for bank
grocery store owners, farm pen while systems
bank account to make account. M-wallet can
input suppliers) connected are offl ine; card
premium payments be used for both pre-
through technology off off er a a can serve as an ID;
mium mium payments and
network of convenient convenient dishas storage capac-
claims settlement
tribution points points
ity (e.g. medical
records)
Disadvantages Requires vendor to be be Expensive to dis- dis-
Cost of WASP tech- tech- tech- Mobile payments plat- platplatonline or connected to to netnet- tribute; smart card
nology required to form often costly to
work; not not ideal for rural rural readers can be
convert airtime into maintain; if a wrong
areas without network cov- costly
real currency can be number is typed and and
erage
prohibitive
money gets credited to
that account, it is very
diffi cult to recover recover
Example Take-it-Eezi and Hollard HDFC Ergo
Cover2go (South M-PESA M-PESA (Kenya)
(South (South Africa), Max Vijay Revive (India)
Africa), Safari Bima
(India)
(Kenya) and AKSItext
(Philippines)
Source: Authors.
Th e partnership between the South African insurance company Hollard
Insurance and the rural vendor network Take-it-Eezi provides an example of
mobile phones used in client enrolment (Smith and Smit, 2010a). Take-it-Eezi
is a branding initiative that enables a network of 18 000 independent agents to
sell prepaid airtime, electricity and insurance in areas that did not have access to
these products before. Each vendor has a GPS-enabled mobile phone. For insurance
sales, once the vendor has collected the client’s fi rst premium payment and
provided the client with an insurance starter pack, the vendor uploads the policy
number and the client’s national ID number to a central server using Take-it-
Eezi’s payment platform operated through the mobile phone. Call centres are
also involved in collecting more detailed client information during the enrolment
process. In the case of Take-It-Eezi, following the receipt of the policyholder’s
identity and telephone numbers, a call centre operated by an insurance
administrator, the Best Funeral Society, phones the client to collect detailed
benefi ciary information and/or provide more information on the product.
Similarly in Brazil, the technology company Vayon has developed a simple
mobile phone enrolment system that enables the agent to send an SMS with the
new customer’s ID number to a national database, which then automatically
populates the application form with the relevant data, including date of birth,
employment and marital status and address. Not only does this streamline the
enrolment process, but it also reduces data entry errors.