Page 54 - State-of-the-Industry-2013

State OF the induStry 2013

Introduction

Key findings

• 123 mobile insurance, credit and savings services are live of which 27 were launched in 2013,
highlighting that there is strong interest in leveraging mobile to deepen fnancial inclusion.
• The mobile insurance industry is gaining traction with the help of specialist intermediaries
and innovative business models that appear to be accelerating product launches
(30 in the past two years)

• The business case is challenging, particularly because these services typically require more
customer education than mobile money products such as P2P transfer, and so providers are
building new sales forces to acquire customers for mobile insurance credit and savings rather
than using existing mobile money agents.

this year we expanded the scope of the mmu Global Survey to include mobile insurance, credit and savings. driven by the market, these
are new areas that mmu is starting to explore using data and insights gathered in 2013. it is early days for mobile insurance, credit and
savings and as we collect data on these services in the coming years, we hope to deepen our insights.

Mobile money and its relationship with mobile insurance,

credit and savings

While mobile insurance can be linked to mobile money, allowing convenient payment of premiums and/or claims, the largest mobile
insurance deployments in our sample do not use the infrastructural “rails” laid down by mobile money. Some mobile insurance
deployments are able to provide insurance to anyone in their market with a mobile phone, given they don’t require mobile money to be
in place. For example, mobile insurance premiums can be paid for from an airtime balance or insurance can be ofered for free as a cus-
tomer loyalty beneft. therefore, the potential reach of mobile insurance is not restricted by the actual reach of a mobile money provider.

On the other hand, mobile credit and savings rely on the infrastructure created by mobile money deployments, and therefore depend
on the growth of mobile money to succeed. as a result, the most successful deployments are in countries where mobile money has
reached scale (Kenya, zimbabwe, and Pakistan).

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