Curacel, one of Afrika’s leading insurance infrastructure startups, has announced the launch of Curacel Grow, an embedded insurance product that empowers technology companies to seamlessly offer insurance as part of their existing products and services. The startup has also indicated that Grow will also enable the seamless embedding of insurance in customer user journeys.
Curacel was part of the Winter 2022 cohort of Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator accelerator and it has a presence in 8 countries across Afrika.
“Risk protection is a major consideration for Africa’s growing middle class. As it becomes easier to access credit and other financial services to enable new experiences, we want to make it easier to protect these experiences and enjoy them with full confidence. The success of various technology companies over the years has opened the door to many previously underserved people and we want to take advantage of this to accelerate the penetration of much-needed insurance products across the continent,” said Henry Mascot, CEO, and co-founder of Curacel.
Embedding insurance
Insurance among many consumers, and not just in Afrika, is somewhat of a grudge purchase. This can be observed in that insurance penetration in Afrika is currently standing at less than three percent, with most policies sold offline and manually via brokers and agents. This cumbersome process makes insurance products expensive and out of reach for many price-sensitive Afrikans. As a result, market penetration of insurance products in Afrika is half of the global average, and premiums per capita are 11 times lower than the global average.
The insurance industry in Afrika also represents less than one percent of insured catastrophe losses worldwide, although it’s home to almost 17% of the global population. This suggests that there is significant scope for growth.
With Curacel's Grow, insurers are said to be able to accelerate the distribution of their products by taking advantage of Curacel’s technology to easily embed insurance within other digital experiences in a more accessible way.
Technology companies can also increase their recurring revenue by offering the protection their consumers need without the hassle of finding integration and negotiating terms with insurers and brokers. The solution is designed to integrate seamlessly with any technology platform and Curacel’s AI-powered infrastructure means claims can be submitted and processed in real-time.
— By Tefo Mohapi
