Twenty leaders and practitioners in the global microinsurance ecosystem attended the Microinsurance Masters program and are poised to adopt learnings from the sustainable framework of the Philippines’ first microinsurance company, CARD Pioneer Microinsurance Inc. (CPMI).
Hosted by Pioneer Insurance and organized by Global accelerator Microinsurance Master (MM), the champions of inclusivity arrived in Manila for a two-week immersion which included talks, interviews and site visits. This will be followed by a three-month on line mentorship from MM when participants return to their home countries and begin to adopt and apply some of the customer centric principles, tools and learnings.
“The challenges being experienced by countries like Thailand and Nigeria, are similar here in the Philippines. We are talking about the unbanked, uninsured population that has very little understanding of what insurance is all about. Our goal is to better serve the low-income segments. We gathered these delegates to learn how Pioneer really made a difference in microinsurance,” said Microinsurance Master Founder Bert Opdebeeck.
“Pioneer’s 18.5 million microinsurance enrollees here in the Philippines is a level not yet attained by any other insurer globally. That is such a high penetration of the population. CARD Pioneer is globally recognized as a microinsurance leader that is setting the pace and being an inspiration for many global players,” Opdebeeck added.
Empowerment through financial inclusion
For Sabiu Abubakar, Deputy Commissioner of the National Insurance Commission of Nigeria, his mission is to learn and apply CPMI’s best practices to help address Nigeria’s financial inclusion gap.
“In Nigeria, there are many low-income earners. Many are excluded from financial protection benefits, particularly insurance hence the government sought for the formulation of a financial inclusion instrument. With microinsurance, they will have access [to financial protection]. Microinsurance exists to take care of these people. We are here to learn from Pioneer’s experience and successes,” Abubakar said.
This was echoed by Mallika Uswachoke, Vice President for Emerging Customer and Strategic Development of Krungthai-AXA Life Insurance, who said that while the Philippines and Thailand face similar challenges, the former has set the pace in terms of penetrating the low-income segment.
“The Philippines has led the way in ensuring that the majority of the population has access [to insurance]. In Thailand, we are still getting into that status. At Krungthai-AXA, we are trying to make insurance more accessible and valuable to the majority of our country’s population,” said Uswachoke.
After completing the two-week immersion program, Uswachoke hopes to bring home some of the key lessons she learned from the program, such as Pioneer’s fast settlement of claims, collaborative public-private partnership, and customer-centric framework.
“Pioneer is the global leader in microinsurance. I think the main takeaway here is putting the customer first and understanding what they need. Another is about finding the right partners whose values are aligned with yours. Lastly, the people in Pioneer actually care and are passionate about what they do. You see it from the top to the bottom. That’s very inspiring to us and hopefully that’s something we can take back to our country,” said Dr. Ikpeme Neto, Founder and CEO of Nigeria-based Wella Health.
CPMI is a joint venture between the Pioneer group and CARD MRI, the country’s largest microfinance institution, to address the protection of the low-income market, including but not limited to coverage for calamity, agriculture, business interruption, health, accident and loss of life.