GreenTec Capital, a German investment firm focused in African start-ups, has entered into investment agreement with Bismart, a Kenyan start up insurance aggregator.
Bismart leverages on digital platforms and technologies to educate and advice customers on the best insurance and investment solutions available in the Kenya market.
GreenTec, headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, will invest an undisclosed amount of money in Bismart to enable the company upscale its digital and online platforms to connect customers to insurance and investments solutions available in the African market.
The agreement, announced in Frankfurt, will see Bismart benefit from GreenTec’s expertise and experience in funding start-ups in Africa through capacity building, and process optimization.
GreenTec will also avail to the Kenyan company a team of international experts to help implement adapted latest technology to the model in order to extend its local value chain and have more impact.
Commenting on the new partnership, Eunice Maina, CEO, Bismart Insurance said the digital interface being developed by the company with assistance from GreenTec will allow the distribution of insurance products across all of Africa, facilitating the rapid roll-out and scaling of the business.
“The platform will also help Bismart to increase efficiency and transparency through the implementation of Blockchain technology “Smart-Contracts” in order to facilitate policy management and benefit from the security of decentralized databases,” She said.
In addition to GreenTec’s investment, Bismart has already benefited from the commitment of an initial investor to develop its platform and expects to launch its service offerings by the start of Q4 2018.
Bismart was awarded seed capital of Sh1 million in April 2018 by Standard chartered Women in Tech programmed and office space for 9 months at IBIZ Africa incubator, as the most innovative and scalable business model in Kenya.
“One of the biggest challenges for innovative startups in Africa is the implementation of solutions with distribution channels that have Pan-African reach. Bismart’s application of emerging technologies solves this problem brilliantly, while disrupting the insurance value chain from customer acquisition to risk management,” GreenTec’s CEO Erick Yong said.
Yong says Insurance adoption in Sub-Saharan Africa is in the low single digits with South Africa an exception with a rate above 10 percent.
This, he says, is due in part to the inability of insurance companies to rely on the traditional payment channels provided by banks for premium collection and claim pay-outs.
