Jubilee Insurance Tanzania: Discussing Recent Trends in the Insurance Sector with Dipankar Acharya

Dipankar Acharya, CEO of Jubilee Insurance Tanzania, discusses the recent trends in the insurance sector, such as bancassurance, digital channels to sell insurance products, etc.

“One trend in the Tanzania insurance market today is that people are trying to look at new distribution channels, for example, bancassurance. There is also the agency channel which is different from the broker channel. Up to now, it was more of a mono line distribution in the sense that it was mostly through brokers. So, 90% to 95% of the business would come through brokers and the balance 5% through something else. But now, we were the first movers in this. Bancassurance happened because the rules were changed by the regulators and then we tried to move along with developing that channel of distribution. We are trying to now harness the agency channel, and as of now, the number of agents that Jubilee has is almost 30% of the entire industry which definitely adds to Jubilee’s credit. If you have a strong agency channel, you will definitely have a better footprint. Apart from that, we also have developed our digital channel around our accident product that we launched where you could even buy the product online. Similarly, on those lines, we also now have the motor insurance and the travel insurance which can be purchased online from your mobile when you are on the go. This is a first in Tanzania and now others are also developing that. We have launched a policy for agriculture, as well. If you see the structure and the pattern of the economy, you will realize that a substantial part of the economy depends on agriculture. We did not have such a very good insurance risk management product which would support the big agricultural segment. Now, with this agriculture product which you can actually buy through your mobile, it will facilitate people from far corners of Tanzania to buy agriculture insurance as long as you have mobile connectivity. We continue with our traditional agriculture products also which you can purchase from the company. But then, this mobile facilitation of agricultural insurance purchase will be a breakthrough. These are basically micro insurance, where you do not expect a lot of premium coming from there. It is more about distributing the product over a large area. The individuals are small, but if you are able to get larger and larger numbers, then total corpus could be big. Also, there is a dual purpose to that which is that you are actually protecting a vulnerable section of the economy which otherwise would go unprotected. The insurance and the risk management would not have reached that section otherwise. Definitely, it involves investment and it involves a lot of risk taking by the insurer. Before you actually get into selling that product, you will have to invest into technology, you will have to invest into building that product, you will have to build the capacity, you will have to build a distribution footprint. The good thing about Jubilee is that by being a big company, a strong company, we are able to do these things. We are happy that we are able to serve a particular segment of the economy which was not served well by insurance and risk management so far”, says Dipankar Acharya.

ABOUT JUBILEE: Jubilee Insurance Ltd, was established as the first incorporated insurance company based in Mombasa in August 1937. Since then, it has become the number one insurance company in East Africa, with offices in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Mauritius, and is recognised as the largest composite insurer in the region with over 450,000 clients.

For more information, please visit: https://jubileetanzania.co.tz.

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