The COVID-19 pandemic and accompanying restrictions by many governments across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have forced insurance providers, insurance regulators and consumers to rethink how they interact and maintain operations through this period. Furthermore, the economic crisis resulting from the pandemic is likely to have substantive impacts on insurance markets across the continent in both the short and the long term.
At Cenfri, through our RRI programme funded by FSD Africa, we are identifying and tracking the major challenges faced by both insurance regulators and providers from COVID-19 across SSA and the responses to these challenges. Whilst the focus for many insurance market participants is on the immediate challenges and responses, COVID-19 will result in both risks and opportunities over the longer term. In particular, COVID-19 has highlighted many of the pre-existing weaknesses in markets and placed further pressure on these. We are particularly interested in identifying what these are, how the current crisis may affect these and what can be done to both mitigate the risks and take advantage of the opportunities that do arise.
Through a combination of interviews with a range of insurance providers and regulators that between them cover more than 30 countries across the continent, combined with desktop knowledge and pre-existing contextual understanding of many of these markets, we will be sharing a series of articles, notes and presentations that capture the experiences of insurance markets across the continent. We will also be sharing thematic notes that highlight some of the longer-term implications, risks and opportunities that we expect to see resulting from the current crisis.
This work forms part of the Risk, Remittances and Integrity programme, a partnership between FSD Africa and Cenfri.