aYo Intermediaries Ghana, the leading inclusive insurance company in the country, has over the past six years reached a significant eight million Ghanaians and paid out more than GHS14 million in over 40,000 claims.
Last year alone, the company paid more than GHS4.5 million in thousands of claims to low income Ghanaians, who would have been left out of insurance cover if not because aYo took the risk to provide cover for that segment of society in spite of the low premium levels therefrom.
CEO of aYo, Francis Gota disclosed this to senior journalists at an interactive forum ahead of the launch of yet another policy package that promises to provide relief for families who cannot afford insurance policies that require big premiums.
The yet-to-be-launched policy, dubbed aYo Family Cover, promises up to GHS15,000 life cover for and GHS300 hospital cover for up to six family members with a premium of only GHS15 per person a month, deductible from the customers’ MTN mobile money wallets.
It comes to add up to aYo’s three existing products – Recharge with Care (RwC), RwC Annual Cover and then Send with Care.
RwC allows customers to pay only GHS6 a month from their MTN airtime and benefit from GHS6,000 life cover for themselves and one other dependant, plus a GHS120 per night of hospital admission.
Under RwC Annual Cover, the customer pays just GHS130 upfront annual premium and still benefits from the GHS6,000 life cover, GHS120 per night hospital admission, plus 10% cashback in case of no claims at the end of the year.
Send with Care (SwC) is a policy that require customers to contribute just 5% of every amount they send on MTN mobile money as premium and then they stand to benefit up to GHS30,000 life cover.
Francis Gota noted that in terms of the contribution of insurance to GDP, penetration is still at a very low 2%, but aYo’s bold step into the inclusive insurance space has pushed insurance penetration in Ghana up significantly in terms of coverage, saying that, at 8 million subscribers, aYo alone is covering 25% of the Ghanaian population.
He said, whereas inclusive insurance has its unique challenges in terms of the low margins it promises, it is also a critical avenue for achieving at least nine of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and that is why aYo is happy to make that contribution in Africa.
On that score, Francis Gota said aYo invests heavily into researching its target audience to understand their needs and design specific products to meet their aspirations, with particular attention to simplicity, easy understanding, affordability and accessibility, value for clients and efficiency in managing the policy.
“We also invest regularly and significantly into technology to ensure efficiency in service delivery, particularly premium payment and the resolution of customer complaints,” he said.
Francis Gota also noted that aYo’s success is driven by its uniqueness reflected in the providing real-time solutions, flexibility in premium payment with airtime and mobile money, multiple touch and service points, constant customer engagement through both interactive media and in-life message among other things.
According to him, Ghana’s success story is being replicated in other African countries, like Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire and others.
He however noted that fraudulent claims has been an issue for them, and sometimes they only realise the fraud after the claims is paid, due to the flexibility in the requirement for claims payment.
“But what we have started doing now is to establish relationships with various hospitals so that we can properly verify any claims made by clients before we pay claims – and we still try to do all that within the shortest possible time so that the client would not have to wait for too long,” he said.
Francis Gota said, driven by its vision – a future where every Ghanaian uses insurance – aYo is still designing policies and products to ensure that even those at the lowest part of the economic ladder get insurance cover, so they can also have some relief when crisis hits.
