Summary

Financial Services: Reframing value to unlock new opportunities across the African continent.

Challenge:

An innovative South African Insurtech platform had reached a crossroad with their investors, who were uncertain how to leverage their platform more effectively. Overt was approached to assist in a business development and strategic support role.

Process:

The team conducted a deep-drive into the business to fully understand the inherent platform capabilities. We crafted an effective pitch and corresponding narrative to help emphasise alignment to investor strategies and the value delivered by the platform.

Outcome:

The Founder was able to run successful realignment sessions with the key investor decision makers. What followed was a rapid roll-out to a number of countries across the continent, and ultimately an increased equity stake acquisition.

Our client, a South African-based Insurtech, built and launched a cloud-based, modular, and highly automated insurance Policy-Administration-as-a-platform offering in 2015. In 2016, they were the first local company to sell and issue an insurance policy entirely on a mobile phone. Fast-forward to 2018 and a 49% equity stake was acquired by a large listed insurer and its listed banking shareholder, thus enabling the platform to effectively launch and scale.
Despite these early successes, our client found itself in a state of stagnation with both shareholders expressing uncertainty about a way forward. We were approached by the Founder to play a business development role, focused on creating strategic support and momentum with the existing shareholders, whilst simultaneously exploring new potential markets.

Our client, a South African-based Insurtech, built and launched a cloud-based, modular, and highly automated insurance Policy-Administration-as-a-platform offering in 2015. In 2016, they were the first local company to sell and issue an insurance policy entirely on a mobile phone. Fast-forward to 2018 and a 49% equity stake was acquired by a large listed insurer and its listed banking shareholder, thus enabling the platform to effectively launch and scale.
Despite these early successes, our client found itself in a state of stagnation with both shareholders expressing uncertainty about a way forward. We were approached by the Founder to play a business development role, focused on creating strategic support and momentum with the existing shareholders, whilst simultaneously exploring new potential markets.

Process

We conducted a deep dive into the business, immersing ourselves fully to understand the capabilities at hand. Simultaneously, we meticulously combed through the shareholders’ strategies and results to identify potential synergies between the businesses.
We worked directly with the CEO / founder to co-create a clear and compelling narrative and pitch deck that could be used to showcase the business. This was carefully designed to articulate the platform’s capabilities in a way that would allow key players in the shareholding companies to recognise it as a means to achieving their own strategies. 
We assisted our client to garner support to participate in an upcoming Hackathon run by the insurance shareholder to prove the ease of integration with the banking group’s chosen Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software provider. 
Armed with the newly articulated narrative, and together with the proof of CRM integration, we helped design a strategy alignment session for the CEO / Founder to run with key players from both shareholding companies to showcase the capabilities of the platform, the integration opportunities, and the alignment with and ability to deliver on their strategic drivers. 
Simultaneously, we co-created a pitch deck that we used to approach two large Telcos to offer them the platform as a service to assist with creating additional value from their client base. While both had recently invested into their own financial service platforms, one was sufficiently impressed to offer to integrate one of the shareholders’ products, via the Insurtech platform, into their super app marketplace. Unfortunately, despite the Telco’s interest in pursuing a proof of concept, the bank requested the Insurtech to pause discussions as they were involved in potentially broader relationship discussions with the Telco.

Process

We conducted a deep dive into the business, immersing ourselves fully to understand the capabilities at hand. Simultaneously, we meticulously combed through the shareholders’ strategies and results to identify potential synergies between the businesses.
We worked directly with the CEO / founder to co-create a clear and compelling narrative and pitch deck that could be used to showcase the business. This was carefully designed to articulate the platform’s capabilities in a way that would allow key players in the shareholding companies to recognise it as a means to achieving their own strategies. 
We assisted our client to garner support to participate in an upcoming Hackathon run by the insurance shareholder to prove the ease of integration with the banking group’s chosen Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software provider. 
Armed with the newly articulated narrative, and together with the proof of CRM integration, we helped design a strategy alignment session for the CEO / Founder to run with key players from both shareholding companies to showcase the capabilities of the platform, the integration opportunities, and the alignment with and ability to deliver on their strategic drivers. 
Simultaneously, we co-created a pitch deck that we used to approach two large Telcos to offer them the platform as a service to assist with creating additional value from their client base. While both had recently invested into their own financial service platforms, one was sufficiently impressed to offer to integrate one of the shareholders’ products, via the Insurtech platform, into their super app marketplace. Unfortunately, despite the Telco’s interest in pursuing a proof of concept, the bank requested the Insurtech to pause discussions as they were involved in potentially broader relationship discussions with the Telco.

Process

We conducted a deep dive into the business, immersing ourselves fully to understand the capabilities at hand. Simultaneously, we meticulously combed through the shareholders’ strategies and results to identify potential synergies between the businesses.
We worked directly with the CEO / founder to co-create a clear and compelling narrative and pitch deck that could be used to showcase the business. This was carefully designed to articulate the platform’s capabilities in a way that would allow key players in the shareholding companies to recognise it as a means to achieving their own strategies. 
We assisted our client to garner support to participate in an upcoming Hackathon run by the insurance shareholder to prove the ease of integration with the banking group’s chosen Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software provider. 
Armed with the newly articulated narrative, and together with the proof of CRM integration, we helped design a strategy alignment session for the CEO / Founder to run with key players from both shareholding companies to showcase the capabilities of the platform, the integration opportunities, and the alignment with and ability to deliver on their strategic drivers. 
Simultaneously, we co-created a pitch deck that we used to approach two large Telcos to offer them the platform as a service to assist with creating additional value from their client base. While both had recently invested into their own financial service platforms, one was sufficiently impressed to offer to integrate one of the shareholders’ products, via the Insurtech platform, into their super app marketplace. Unfortunately, despite the Telco’s interest in pursuing a proof of concept, the bank requested the Insurtech to pause discussions as they were involved in potentially broader relationship discussions with the Telco.

Outcome

By deliberately exposing the effectiveness and efficiency of the insurance as a platform offering through an appropriately crafted narrative, 3rd party validation, a carefully selected and designed set of engagements with key decision makers in the Group and the subsequent rapid roll out to a number of countries in Africa, there has been a groundswell shift in the understanding of a significant value unlock for a number of core insurance offerings in the broader group in both in the short term and life businesses. As a result of this, the Group significantly increased its equity stake in the platform. In addition, one of the unique capabilities designed into the platform is now to be adopted broadly at the insurer.

Thinking Ahead

The innovative thinking and processes designed by the Insurtech platform have contributed to how we think about problem solving. Their approach lends itself to creating impact at scale with different applications across a multitude of environments. Thinking about product and service design and development in this context helps us to pursue resilient, compelling and differentiated solutions. With the additional equity stake, there are some regulatory constraints in terms of where and how the Insurtech platform can compete. As a result, we continue to work closely with the CEO / Founder to explore new opportunities in adjacent sectors.