MyCover.ai increases access to embedded insurance in Africa

by James · November 25, 2022

According to a financial inclusion report by Efina, only 2% of adults in Nigeria are insured, meaning millions of Nigerians are not managing their risk despite the accompanying problems that are likely to arise if things do not go as planned.

Securing your risk as a business person is important for your company’s sustainability. MyCover.ai, one of our sponsors for The Fintech Summit, works to make access to insurance products easy through its offerings.

As we prepared for the summit, we caught up with the co-founder of MyCover.ai, where he discussed what they do at MyCover.ai and his expectations for The Fintech Summit.

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Let’s meet you – what’s your name and what do you do at Mycover.ai?

My name is Adebowale Banjo and I am the co-founder and CEO of MyCover.ai. Primarily, I am responsible for envisioning the day-to-day operations of the business for growth and providing direction for everyone.

Can we know more about MyCover.ai and its offerings?

MyCover.ai is an insurtech platform. Primarily, we are focused on building Africa’s digital insurance infrastructure. When you look at the challenges plaguing the insurance sector, not only in Nigeria but across the continent, you can place them into three main buckets. So it’s underwriting, product development and then distribution, which essentially talks about access to those products. Then there is the claims handling side of things.

We provide the infrastructure that simplifies underwriting and product design and provides data to the underwriter to make better decisions and create better products that help them. Our insurance API makes it easy for people, i.e. insurance companies in this case, to distribute their products faster and cheaper and make them more accessible to the end user.

The third stage is to streamline the claims process, eliminate fraud, reduce processing time and deliver good experiences to customers. So that’s what we’re doing with our API, and that’s why we say we’re building the digital insurance infrastructure for the continent. This infrastructure is expected to provide services across these three main points and facilitate insurance penetration to grow across the continent.

You should see us more as the engine that is here to drive the growth of insurance across the continent. We also have a B2B platform focused on small businesses, startups and medium-sized businesses.

The platform provides a one-stop shop for businesses when it comes to insurance needs, whether it’s buying health insurance for employees, insurance for laptops and devices, or setting up travel insurance or property insurance for those in the logistics industry and their business.

So those are the two offers we have. One is on the API side of things, where we’re disrupting the entire infrastructure that runs insurance. The other is a B2B platform where companies can insure themselves, their employees and their business. That platform is called myCovergenius.com. Interestingly, we are still in beta and we will launch it before the event.

We will also provide specific discounts to business owners participating in Fintech so they can test the platform and enjoy these benefits.

To shed more light on what our API currently does in terms of deployment. We do what you call built-in insurance just like you have built-in finance. We make it possible for almost anyone to be able to offer insurance products to their audience.

So imagine that most fintech companies today are able to leverage our API to offer insurance to the public. People making money transfers can also give their customers an opportunity to buy insurance for their people at home or themselves using our API. We look at e-commerce platforms and can offer gadget insurance to their customers by leveraging our API. So there’s built-in insurance, and that makes insurance available to everyone across the continent.

What excites you about The Fintech Summit?

We are happy because it is an opportunity to meet many players in the fintech area with whom we can collaborate, so that they can then have built-in insurance on their platforms. They can offer this to their customers. They already have traction as many customers use their platforms every day, and the opportunity for us to offer insurance as a service to those customers appeals to us.

Secondly, we must participate actively in the conversation. The conversation around what has worked so far regarding fintech in Nigeria and Africa and what the next frontier is in terms of where we go from here and how we get there. Much has been done in the form of payments; Cross-border payments are growing every day, and local payments are going well, but where do we stand in terms of credit? Although there are many BNPL solutions and all that, what is the cost of funds? These are the conversations I believe will be taken at this conference. Nevertheless, it is primarily an opportunity for us to engage the key players in the fintech space and to expose to them what you consider a great opportunity, not only for them and us, but for the continent as a whole.

What pain points do you think need to be addressed in Africa’s fintech sector?

I think the first would be insurance. So people are building for payments, whether it’s local payments, cross-border payments or agency banking.

We are working on payments, and we have made some progress with it. We do now, buy now, pay later, but not much has been done with insurance.

Therefore, it is a great opportunity for us as a company to not only make insurance accessible to people through our B2B platform, but to partner with fintech companies to ensure that the reach is wider than what we can achieve on our own. So the role of insurance in the growth of fintech across the continent needs to be addressed. So you have agents that have POS that aren’t insured, agents that don’t have life or health insurance. Omnibiz and players like them make it easy for traders to access goods, but these traders need trade insurance. If their markets burn, they are exposed and all the goods they spent money on are gone. So there is a lot of exposure to risk, especially in business in Nigeria. Doing business actively without protecting your risk is not a wise decision.

Secondly, I talked about the growth of BNPL capital finance companies. But there is still a challenge with the cost of funds. So we need to have that conversation about how we can make access to credit cheaper for people, and then there’s also the infrastructure that supports that right; it’s a credit bureau, but no credit score. So when you talk about knocking unbanking, I think people largely, with the exception of a few players who have dug deep, many times, pay lip service to it. You go to some places and you will find that the penetration is undoubtedly high, but there are still places where a lot more can be done. So banking the unbanked or underbanked is another conversation to hear as well.

What effect will you expect from conversations that will be held at the Fintech Summit?

I think when you look at the natural progression of things like this, firstly, you have an opportunity to be put in a room with leaders in their respective fields, all under the fintech umbrella. You will hear them talk about what they have been able to do, the challenges they are facing, and the next steps in terms of what they intend to do and the next problems they want to solve. These conversations are usually stimulating and I expect they will produce a road map.

Besides, it depends on what Techpoint Africa decides to do after the events, whether you want to articulate all these thoughts in a roadmap for the future of fintech.

Secondly, I see a lot of cooperation between the various actors; between tech companies, insurtech companies and fintech companies. The third thing I see is a continued conversation with the regulators.

This is because usually when you look at problems and your life problems and your professional solutions to them, you realize that there are so many elements to make it work and a key pillar of that is the government.

So I expect that a continuous commitment from the government will happen. These talks simulate a clear path to the next milestones for fintech in the country and on the continent.

MyCover.ai will be exhibiting at the fintech summit and they are offering business owners attending the summit a huge discount to use their B2B platform, MyCoverGenius.