The rate of digitalization of systems, across industries in Africa and Ghana, has moved from the snail-paced pockets or littered progress witnessed in the last two decades to a fast-paced advancements at a neck-breaking speed.
The proliferation and absorption or uptake of digital systems mean more efficiency and efficacy, improving turnaround time, improving service delivery, creating access to hitherto subsectors that were closed to a certain portions of populations across the continent of Africa.
Bank and non-bank institutions have initiated numerous digital products aimed at onboarding underserved populations. As a result, as shared by the World Bank, millions of formerly excluded and underserved poor customers are moving from exclusively cash-based transactions to formal financial services including but not restricted to payments, transfers, savings, credit, and even securities using mobile phones or other digital technologies.
The insurance industry in Ghana in the past few years has witnessed its share of digital innovations and introduction of digital systems all aimed at ensuring insurance accessibility and improving insurance coverage.
Key industry players in Ghana’s insurance sector had envisaged digitization as a game-changer. In 2018, for example, CEO of Donewell Insurance and the current President and Chairman of the Ghana Insurers Association, Mr. Seth Kobla Aklasi, had admonished that, either insurance companies in Ghana digitize or die off. According to him digitalization was a critical component of the evolution of services insurance companies provide to their clientele and/or target market.
But, has the various digitalization initiatives within the insurance industry in Ghana achieved the desired goals?
“Unfortunately, I don’t think that we are reaping the benefits of what this industry invested in digitization. Over the past five or six years there’s been quite a lot of activity in that space. A lot of people have launched all sorts of digital systems like portals that you can access with USSD, there’s chatbots that they basically have launched in recent times. We have all those things but I just think that the insurance buying population is not ready yet”, Mr. Seth Kobla Aklasi explained in an exclusive interview with Happy98.9FM and happyghana.com.
The President of the Ghana Insurers Association believes a key reason for the slow uptake is the fact that a lot of the target market that interface with digital platforms have not transitioned to the point of having enough assets and liabilities to purchase insurance.
The other reason, he shared is that some insurance subscribers prefer “the human touch” when purchasing insurance policies and believe with time, the digital uptake will increase and yield the expected results.
This notwithstanding, there is a sense of optimism that the digital innovations within the insurance industry have a huge potential of scaling coverage. What many players concur with is that there is a huge imperative to refocus attention at introducing new measures and strategies to deal with cultural barriers impeding uptake. “Once again, for the cultural issues, I believe it’s just a matter of time. We have the tools and we will continuously evolve as a market and then take off at a point” Mr. Aklasi optimistically shared.