Kifiya, Netherlands’ Gov’t Develop Micro Insurance Service at 2.1m Euros

Kifiya Financial Technology Plc, in public partnership with the Government of the Netherlands, is developing a Geodata driven risk-mitigation micro insurance service at a cost of 2.1 million euros. The service will become operational in March 2016.

Seventy percent of the cost to develop and set up the project, which goes by the name of Geodata for Innovative Agricultural Credit Insurance Schemes (GIACIS), is covered by the Netherlands’ government while the rest is paid from Kifiya’s pocket. Established in 2010, Kifiya is a digital finance and payment services provider, which runs Unified Billing System in Ethiopia known as Lehulu.

The technology will enable insurance companies to provide farmers with access to insurance coverage through accurate and diverse weather indicators and protection from weather related threats, said Munir Duri, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Kifiya.

On Thursday April 16, 2015, the inauguration of the GeoNetCast equipment installation and operation, which is part of the project, was held in the compound of the National Meteorology Agency (NMA), located near Bole International Airport. The customisation and installation of the system in the 11 NMA branch offices is carried out by ICT University of Tewente (The Netherlands) for 334,000 euros.

GeoNetCast will enable NMA to access large amounts of environmental data on rain clouds and vegetation coverage, among others, via satellite connection for data management and visualisation within one kilometre range, said Dula Shanko, deputy director general of NMA.

These analysed data will be transferred to Kifiya’s Insurance Platform server in 10 day intervals and will be used as input to calculate risks such as crop loss and to determine insurance premium, which benefit insurance companies and reinsurers, said Megerssa Miressa, director of Micro Insurance Programme at Kifiya. When the project commences its service, the NMA will get a payment based on the amount of data it transfers, he added.

The insurance platform is developed by MicroSave, an international financial inclusion consulting company, which is currently operating in 10 countries across Asia and Africa. The company has been working on the platform for the last six months and is expected to finalise it by February, 2016.

Furthermore, Kifiya has plans to design a transaction fee structure to enable the development and delivery of the GIACIS product and collection of premium using mobile phones and its agents.

Three insurance companies, namely Nyala Insurance S.C, Africa Insurance Company S.C. and Oromia Insurance Company S.C. have already signed letters of intent with Kifiya, to use the system it develops.


Posted

in

by

Tags:

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.