What challenges exist around remote onboarding?

COVID-19 has caused significant disruptions to insurers’ operations, as they still have traditional business models and rely heavily on physical engagement for distribution.

The lack of digitisation across the continent has emerged as a key barrier from our research on the impact that COVID-19 has had on sub-Saharan African (SAA) insurance markets. This has resulted in a significant slowdown in new sales and it became evident that challenges exist around remote onboarding and selling insurance digitally. However, enabling digital sales and remote onboarding have emerged as key priorities for both insurers and regulators and may also be an opportunity to enable innovation and more efficient operations in the long term.

We identified three key steps that the industry needs to take to enable remote onboarding. Firstly, enabling digital contracting, both within regulation and making sure that insurers’ internal systems are able to onboard customers remotely. Secondly, enabling customer due diligence/know-your-customer that allows remote onboarding of customers, which involves collecting and verifying identify information electronically and remotely. Lastly, understanding digital behaviour in your market and ensuring that consumers are able and willing to engage digitally. These are further unpacked in the presentation below.

This work forms part of the Risk, Remittances and Integrity programme, a partnership between FSD Africa and Cenfri.