IndustriesInsurance
Let people buy cover the way they buy everything else.
Buying insurance here still means a phone call, a form, a wait and somebody getting back to you. The same customer books a flight, pays a bill and moves money from their phone in under a minute. That gap is not a small inconvenience. It is the reason a younger insurer will take business off an older one.
So the work we do in this sector starts with the part your customer actually touches: quote, buy, pay, get the cover note. Behind it sits the system that turns each of those into a policy record, a commission line and a regulatory submission, without anybody retyping anything.
If somebody can buy airtime in thirty seconds, why does cover take a day?
What usually breaks
Not a list of features missing. A list of the places the work actually falls over, in this sector, in this market.
- 01
Every sale needs a person
A quote is a phone call. Accepting it is another one. A renewal is a third. Volume is capped by how many people you can put on phones, and nothing gets sold at nine on a Sunday evening.
- 02
The cover note is instant. Everything around it is not.
TIRA requires the cover note the moment it is issued, so that part is already digital. What still takes hours, or the rest of the day, is everything on either side of it: collecting the details, confirming the payment, getting the document to the customer and updating your own records.
- 03
The claim lives in an email thread
Documents arrive from the client, the assessor, the garage and the broker. Nobody can say what is still outstanding, so the reserve is an estimate of an estimate.
- 04
Commission is rebuilt every month
Broker and agent statements are reconstructed in a spreadsheet, and the disputes that follow take longer than the calculation did.
- 05
Renewals lapse quietly
Nothing chases a renewal until the client has already been quoted by somebody else. The first you hear of it is that the premium did not arrive.
- 06
The regulatory return is a second job
TIRA expects bookings close to real time. If the data has to be retyped out of one system into another to get there, it will be late and it will not agree with your own book.
What we build
Insurance is one of the sectors where we have real ground under us: a system we can describe module by module, and integration work for the parts you already run.
- 01
The bit your customer uses
Quote, choose, pay and receive the cover note, on a phone, in one sitting. The customer finishes buying at the moment they decided to buy.
- 02
Payment at the point of sale
Mobile money and card, taken the moment the customer decides, and matched to the policy it paid for. A quote that ends in a bank transfer somebody has to go and check is a quote that half the time never converts.
- 03
Policy administration
Products and rating, cover notes, endorsements, mid-term adjustments and renewals, with the document generated straight from the record.
- 04
Claims
Intake from WhatsApp, portal or the branch, a document checklist that shows what is missing, reserving, assessor assignment, settlement and recovery, with the claim ageing the whole time.
- 05
Broker and agent portal
They quote, issue cover and check their own statements. Commission is calculated by the system, so both sides are looking at the same number.
- 06
Regulatory returns and the trail behind them
Built out of the book, with every entry carrying who did what and when, which is the part an audit actually asks for.
- 07
An assistant that works out of hours
Cover status, claim status and document requests answered around the clock, and handed to a person the moment the question involves money or a commitment.
What it has to live with
Nothing here runs on its own. These are the systems your business already answers to, and a system that ignores them is a system somebody has to work around.
- 01
Mobile money and bank transfers
The part that decides whether a customer finishes buying. Premium collected at the moment of the decision, including instant transfers over TIPS, the Bank of Tanzania's instant payment system, and claim payouts back out the same way.
- 02
TIRA MIS
The regulator's system for cover notes and the electronic motor sticker, and for the near real time bookings it now expects from insurers, brokers and agents. A policy sold at midnight still has to arrive there.
- 03
TRA fiscal receipting
Fiscal invoices and receipts on premium through the Virtual Fiscal Device, issued by the system itself.
- 04
NIDA
Identity verification during a self-service purchase, so a policy sold with nobody in the middle still starts from a checked identity.
- 05
The core you already run
Where a core system exists, we sit beside it. Nobody has to move a book of business to start selling online.
What changes
The reason to do any of it, in the language of the person signing for it.
- Cover bought and paid for without anybody on a phone, at any hour
- A policy record created by the sale itself, so the book is always today's book
- Commission both sides agree with, because both sides are reading the same calculation
- Renewals chased by the system, before somebody else quotes your client
- A claim you can age, so you know what is outstanding and what it is costing you
- Regulatory returns that come straight out of the book
Where this usually starts
Most companies in this sector begin with one of these and add the rest later.
- Business systems (ERP)One system your company runs on, built around the way it already works.
- WebsitesThe first thing a client, a partner or a supplier looks at before they call you.
- WhatsApp business systemsYour business operated from the app your staff and customers already use.
- Data analysis and reportingThe patterns your day-to-day numbers hide, and what to do about each one.
Questions you probably have
The ones we are actually asked, answered the way we answer them on a call.
- Will customers in this market actually buy insurance online?
- They already buy airtime, electricity, bus tickets and goods online, and they pay for all of it from a phone. Cover has lagged because almost nobody has offered it properly. What matters is that the journey is short, the price is visible, and payment is mobile money.
- We already have a core system. Do we have to replace it?
- No, and we would usually advise against it. Most of our insurance work sits alongside an existing core and fills the gaps around it: the customer journey, the claims process, the broker portal, the reporting. Replacing a core is a decision with its own business case, and it is rarely the cheapest way to fix the thing that is actually hurting.
- What about brokers? Does selling direct cut them out?
- It does not have to, and for most insurers here it should not. The same system gives brokers and agents their own portal, their own book and a commission calculation they can check. Direct is an extra channel that runs at night and at weekends, not a replacement for the people already bringing you business.
- Can you work with both general and life?
- Yes. We build to the classes you write and the rating behind them. Where it has to talk to something you already run, all we need is a way in to that system and we can make it work.
- How is our data handled?
- Labedan is a Registered Data Processor with the Personal Data Protection Commission of Tanzania. Your data is handled under a legal framework with obligations attached.
- Will it work in Swahili?
- Yes. The interface runs in English and Swahili. English is the working language in this industry, and Swahili earns its place at the customer end and wherever a branch or an agent prefers it.