No insurance market faces challenges on par with those of South Africa: the majority of the populace earns only between R1000 and R3000 per month, a fact that raises a range of economic and social challenges. Access to insurance is low with costs and complexity being the most insurmountable barriers for the majority of South Africans. A lack of understanding the need and role of insurance also prevails.
The myriad challenges South African insurers face have required a unique response, and SDT has been able to assist one of largest of South Africa's life insurers to service this market through innovative products and processes running off the Microsoft based SDT Exergy solution.Cell phone technology paired with a robust back-end solution, all running on a Microsoft platform, allows clients in the lower income markets to buy and extent life cover via widely accessible technology. This has been used in South Africa and in other countries on the continent.
The aim of micro-insurance is to service this previously unserved market by providing products that are easy to understand, products that the client wants to buy rather than products that have to be sold, at a convenient location - usually close to their place of residence. Technology is the enabler allowing use of existing infrastructure and people in these places to market insurance products.
One of SDT's clients, Cover2go, has entered this market with a groundbreaking product that makes use of GPRS powered handheld vending terminals to make it easy for customers to buy and pay recurring premiums at their local spaza shop (informal trading store), as easily as they would buy cell phone airtime or prepaid electricity.
Using Microsoft technology, we were able to develop what we call our "life insurance in a box" model. This allows customers such as Metropolitan to go live in record time, and it comes with the architecture and framework required to roll out new applications rapidly, along with innovative strategies to get business on the books.
It makes provision for third-party providers, allows for the delivery of product via multiple channels, including cell phone channels.
Our approach, being built on Microsoft technology, is lower cost than any comparable product, and it can be customized to each distribution channel and to suit individual companies' requirements.
The application has been designed using the Microsoft .NET framework, and runs against a Microsoft SQL Server back-end. It is 100% SOA-compliant, and as it is running in an open environment, it can communicate and integrate with any other technology. Vitally, it is flexible and industry-standard, and while it has a low cost of entry, it can scale from 10 users to 10 million or more.
It is just one example of how we have partnered with Microsoft over the last decade,
and why we as a company remain committed to Microsoft platforms.
Contact
Freda du Toit, SDT, (012) 360 0100
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Karen Heydenrych, Predictive Communications, (011) 608 1700
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