A leading financial services and technology platform, Tangerine Nigeria, plans to deepen financial inclusion in Nigeria with the deployment of tech-driven solutions.
Dapo Akisanya, head, Pensions, Tangerine Nigeria, stated this during the official launch of the company’s financial service product offerings in Lagos.
“In less than two years, we have been able to successfully acquire and rebrand several businesses, firmly establishing Tangerine,” Akinsanya said.
According to him, “We have also made significant strides in repositioning our businesses in readiness for growth by assembling a strong, agile and experienced team that aligns with our strategic thinking.”
In the area of recapatalisation, he said: “The Nigerian insurance industry is currently going through a suspended recapitalisation process, which had sought to increase the minimum statutory capital levels for life insurance and general insurance businesses from N2billion to N8billion and N3 billion to N10 billion, respectively. For our two insurance businesses – Tangerine Life and Tangerine General – this recapitalisation process has already been concluded.”
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Speaking on the company’s plans to deepen financial inclusion and impact the Nigerian socio-economic landscape, he said: “At Tangerine, we believe in democratising access to financial services and products and we seek to achieve this by developing simple value-adding products that are easy to understand and, which leverage technology to increase ease of accessibility, helping millions of uninsured Nigerians have protection or save for the future.”
He explained that the company comprised entities such as Tangerine Life, Tangerine General, Tangerine Pensions and Tangerine Money.
According to him, “Tangerine is positioned to be Africa’s preferred one-stop financial solutions provider, leveraging a tech-driven, flexible, high-access platform to drive business across all the financial services segments in Africa to deepen financial inclusion, facilitate wealth creation and protection.”
Livingstone Magorimbo, head, Life Insurance, Tangerine Nigeria, said Tangerine aimed to be No.1 financial solutions provider of choice in Africa by driving efficiency, value addition and growth.
“Our intention over the next three to four years is to build strong businesses that are profitable and have a fair share of the larger market, in all of the segments we participate in. We aim to do this by ensuring that the assets acquired in Nigeria are efficient and all the merger synergies are fully realized,” Magorimbo said.
The Life Insurance head also said: “In addition, we plan to generate value through customer acquisition, expansion of our agent network, cross-selling to our pool of customers and improving efficiencies. The issue of real time claims processing is one of our target deliverables, as we continue to look for operational efficiencies to add value to our customers and distribution.”
Explaining that technology is the backbone of the Tangerine financial services ecosystem, Ibitunde Balogun, head, Commercial, who spoke on the company’s approach to product development, said: “We have merged deep consumer insights and cutting-edge technology to build a range of carefully-tailored and relevant products that create value by broadening the financial potential of every individual, offering a unique blend of life insurance coverage, pensions and wealth management to help individuals live without the worries of the future”.
According to him, “At Tangerine, we believe that digital transformation done right, can help build a seamless environment for interaction with customers. This is what guides our agile infrastructure. We have built a one-stop platform for customers that features a front-end user interface that enables seamless interaction; with single sign-on for our mobile app; a core operating platform that is specific to each business which cross-sells within regulatory limits to other businesses; and the ability to integrate Application Programming Interface (APIs) smoothly, facilitating partnerships.
“We’ve also built intelligence capability by implementing business logic and Artificial Intelligence (AI), giving due consideration to the Nigeria Data Protection Regulations and other local data privacy rules of industry specific regulators. AI is used to understand and predict customer needs and preferences, and thus, optimise value-add across all touch points.”
