MTN initiates mobile based life insurance

Courtesy of Rwanda’s leading telecommunications company, life insurance has been added onto the MTN mobile money platform in a bid to facilitate increased penetration of insurance services in Rwanda which are said to have a low uptake in the market.

In the process of developing the recently introduced MTN life care product, the telecoms company went into partnership with Prime Life Insurance Ltd, a Rwandan company providing life cover. The duo is what gave rise to the first insurance product selling on a mobile money platform in Rwanda.

MTN life care is designed such that most Rwandans especially those in the low income earning brackets can afford it and without having to undergo the bureaucratic and cumbersome procedures often characteristic of insurance services.

For instance, this product which has three various categories of life insurance; silver, gold, and premium, provides for customers the opportunity to choose from paying premiums as low as Rwf4525 annually for a benefit Rwf0.25m in the event of death of the insured.

Also, from the usual forms carrying at least fifty questions for a subscriber to an insurance package to fill, with the mobile money based service, customers only go through four steps to have their life insured and all this is done on one’s phone.

The development of the product finds root in the need to reduce the challenges that most deaths especially in rural Rwanda leave to families of the deceased.

Oftentimes, as Gregoire Minani, the CEO of Prime life assurance Ltd explained, when someone dies, the family finds its self in the way of trouble as they try to put together money to cater for the final rite ceremonies for the departed member.

Even so, oftentimes in the aftermath of the death especially when the deceased had responsibilities of taking care of the family, those left behind are in a dissolute state which for many takes years to escape the effects of their guardian’s death.

In a bid to solve such challenges, people especially in the low income brackets have in the past come up with small tontine structures to pull together a few resources with the prime aim of supporting families to respectfully bury their loved one in the event of the death of a member of the group.

But as Mr. Minani explained, such developments like the tontines are run on traditional basis and are prone to malpractices of embezzlement and mismanagement by those charged to steward them hence there was a need for an affordable life insurance product which has now been made possible by MTN’s mobile money platform.

Processes from registration, paying annual premiums, changing details of one’s account like changing the beneficiary, among other features are all done remotely on one’s mobile without necessarily ever having to visit any offices.

And in the event of passing away, all that the family is required to do is submit a death certificate to any Prime Life Assurance offices and the disbursement of the money is guaranteed to happen in less than 24hours, also through the mobile.

Besides the death certificate, the family may also submit an executive letter from a local authority for instance a village chief, religious leader among others, in the event that acquiring a death certificate appears to delay.

Speaking at the event to launch the new insurance service on the company’s mobile money platform, MTN’s Acting CEO Mr. Patrick Uwizeye reiterated their commitment to giving added value to customers using the mobile money platform.

“We are resolved to continue innovating in all corners so as to serve our esteemed customers to the best measure there can be,” he offered.
With MTN health care, there is no excuse for any Rwandan to not plan for their moment of death which after all is one of the few certain things to happen for any living human.

All it takes is dialing *188# and following prompts for registered MTN mobile money customers or subscribing to Rwanda’s largest mobile money service provider immediately to enjoy the service.