Innovation Village, IRA look to technology to boost insurance penetration

Innovation Village in partnership with Insurance Regulatory Authority of Uganda (IRA) have launched the IRA InsureX Program aimed at providing support to innovators with the end goal of doubling insurance penetration by 2025.

Mr Sande Protazio, the Director Planning, Research and Market Development at IRA, said the program aims to provide support to innovators to enable them identify opportunities, build and scale their solutions.

“This program comes at a time when the insurance regulator’s attention is more focused on innovation due to unique customer demands which need solutions that are in line with evolving technology”  Protazio said at the launch on Friday.

 “When we hear customers say that insurance players need to innovate more, we think they mean that they want us to anticipate and respond to their needs more effectively” he added.

He added that the InsureX program is a crucial aspect of IRA digitalization agenda that is designed to bring together InsurTech innovators to use a shared digital infrastructure to build solutions faster, build a critical mass of technology-aware insurance professionals, create market access opportunities for insurance solutions, and encourage collaboration around a connected insurance ecosystem towards doubling penetration by 2025.

“The program brings to life our Regulatory Sandbox by ensuring we not only have a steady number of high-quality solutions applying to join but that such solutions where accepted, have the fundamentals in place and opportunity to rapidly scale while in and upon graduating the sandbox. As a regulator, we are committed to supporting innovators to get market validation of their ideas as we collaborate to develop the appropriate regulatory approach to enable them succeed for the benefit of the industry” Protazio said.

The IRA InsureX program is designed to support insurance innovators to test entirely new or refine existing approaches to how insurance is packaged, bought and sold, and what value consumers get out of it by leveraging emerging opportunities in the sector such as microinsurance, telematics, algorithmic risk assessment, self-service and more.

According to Arthur Mukembo, Future Lab Studio Lead at the Innovation Village, the sandbox will provide a safe space for entrepreneurs to innovate, build and test market-driven insurance innovations under a flexible regulatory regime.

Mukembo said, “The IRA InsureX program is an opportunity for existing licensed players and insurance solutions wanting to digitalize, and innovators building technology solutions that want to embed insurance solutions to get support building, testing, refining and scaling these solutions through a structured journey in collaboration with the regulator through their Sandbox mechanism.”

“The Sandbox at its core is a safe space where innovators can test their innovations in the market around an agreed set of principles with the regulator while receiving support from the regulator and Innovation Village to refine the innovations and approach to market access in preparation for scale.” he added.

The IRA InsureX Program is designed to unlock various opportunities for insurance sector innovators by increasing adoption, unlocking new revenue streams, optimizing routes-to-market and costs to acquire and serve customers while shorten time-to-market, among others.

Participants will access developer tools to reduce the time to and cost of testing solutions, get support preparing compliant applications to the Regulatory Sandbox, get expert advice on developing, refining and implementing Product and Go to Market Strategy, and sharpen innovation acumen and capabilities to support building and scaling solutions, among others.

Whereas Uganda’s insurance sector continues to experience strong growth evidenced by the increase in the Gross Written Premium (GWP) over the years from sh240b in 2010 to sh1.2 trillion in 2021, there continues to be a need for sector players to embrace innovation and adopt technology to increase market adoption of insurance solutions, creating opportunities to grow market share.