Curacel launches embedded insurance product to boost adoption

Curacel, an African insurance infrastructure startup, has launched Curacel Grow, an embedded insurance product that empowers technology companies to offer insurance as part of their existing products and services.

Curacel is an insurance infrastructure company that helps insurers and partners in Africa and other emerging markets increase the reach and functionality of insurance through cloud-based tools and application programming interfaces (APIs).

“Risk protection is a major consideration for Africa’s growing middle class. As it becomes easier to access credit and other financial services to enable new experiences, we want to make it easier to protect these experiences and enjoy them with full confidence. Various technology companies have opened the door to many underserved people and we want to take advantage of this to accelerate the penetration of much-needed insurance products across the continent,” Henry Mascot, CEO, and co-founder of Curacel said.

Curacel is launching Grow to support the more effective distribution of insurance to millions of Africans through partners like Barter by Flutterwave, Float, Payhippo, and other technology companies.

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The startup will also enable the embedding of insurance in customer user journeys. With Curacel Grow, airlines will be able to offer travel insurance to their customers through simple APIs.

Similarly, automotive dealers will be able to sell insurance to customers as a value-added service. Curacel has built its market infrastructure that powers claims and fraud protection for forward-thinking insurers like AXA Mansard and Old Mutual, and this expansive network of underwriters enables the distribution of insurance at scale.

As part of the Winter 2022 cohort of Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator accelerator, Curacel currently works with 15 insurance companies in 8 African markets.

Insurance penetration in Africa currently stands at less than three percent, with most policies sold offline and manually via brokers and agents. This process makes insurance products expensive and out of reach for many price-sensitive Africans.

As a result, market penetration of insurance products in Africa is half of the global average, and premiums per capita are 11 times lower than the global average. The insurance industry in Africa also represents less than one percent of insured catastrophe losses worldwide, although it’s home to almost 17 percent of the global population. This suggests that there is significant scope for growth.

With Grow, insurers can accelerate the distribution of their products by taking advantage of Curacel’s technology to easily embed insurance within other digital experiences in a more accessible way. Technology companies can also increase their recurring revenue by offering the protection their consumers need without the hassle of finding integration and negotiating terms with insurers and brokers.