Insuring our future
Zimnat
CONNECTING LIFE ASSURANCE TO THE FUTURE 02
Zimnat’s Group Chief Digital Officer Tendayi Chirokote on the challenges he faced transforming the digital culture of the Zimbabwean life assurance company
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IT
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consultant Tendayi Chirokote was working for African telco Telecel Zimbabwe when Zimbabwean insurer Zimnat tasked him with spearheading a digital transformation at the company. “I was working with Telecel Zimbabwe for about four years and before that Econet Wireless for about seven to eight years,” he explains. “Yeah, it was quite exciting coming up with a lot of mobile solutions: mobile money, money farming and mobile tracking, plus a lot of work integrating the Econet business into one ERP solution.” Insurance had become a dirty word across the African continent since the economic collapse of 2008 had seen so many companies go to the wall. Needing to remodel the public’s perception of insurance, particularly when times were tough, led Zimnat to pursuing better communications both externally and internally. “Zimnat were in need of a digital transformation drive,” Chirokote explains. “They wanted to go into an omnichannel environment, driven digitally and I had experience of integration work, and a lot of experience from a digital product perspective.” In September 2017, Zimnat tasked Chirokote with looking at the current technological infrastructure, focussing on its
hardware and connectivity ahead of transforming the business over the following three to five years. “I took a good look at the IT space and recommended a strategy of how to structure and take the business from bricks and mortar to a fully digital environment. “The first area we looked at was the legacy technology, which was not at the level where the business needed to be. We put in place plans to modernise the
“ The other challenge was that we wanted to reach out to customers who don’t live in the big cities, in areas that are virtually impossible to reach in a bricksand-mortar approach” — Tendayi Chirokote, Chief Digital Officer
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technology and came up with a strategy of
digitise the work environment
how to continually modernise it over a period
itself, because it’s difficult for you
of three to five years.”
to expect somebody who oper-
The second stage of Chirokote’s work at
ates in a traditional work
Zimnat was to change the internal culture.
environment to deliver a digital
“How do we transform the culture of the busi-
experience to a customer.”
ness so that people start moving from a
Chirokote and his team started
bricks-and -mortar type environment, to staff
looking at ways of introducing
who were able to operate in a digital environ-
digital to Zimnat’s communica-
ment? So, we looked at the people and said to
tions internally to move from the
ourselves: ‘How do we train? How do we start
manual analogue to more digital
engaging the team?’ We did this before we
systems such as email communi-
started looking at our customers. We needed
cation, intranet-based messaging.
to start introducing technology internally to
The CEO, Mustafa Sachak, started w w w. z i m n a t . c o . z w
a blog to maximise exposure to digital
platform. This has been so valuable for
communication. Changing communi-
our day-to-day operations in the busi-
cations internally was really important
ness especially when you start to alter
and a number of features were intro-
the culture of a company.”
duced that fully utilised the expertise of
With any change comes glitches
the workforce. “Every Friday, we would
and risk and there was some limited
all share global trends in terms of the
resistance to the internal changes to
insurance sector or learning. Our HR
workplace culture and protocol. “Staff
department introduced a digital plat-
started to raise the question: ‘Will I lose
form where people could share a growing
my job to the machine?’” Chirokote
knowledge base through our courses.
explains. “So, the challenge was to try
Now, instead of using physical man-
and give them confidence. ‘We want
uals they could actually download
you to move away from processing and
information as part of a digital learning
number crunching, as we actually need
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you to analyse our growing data and for mak-
fied some small ways in which
ing decisions on how we can improve the
people could actually see some
business.’”
of these digital processes in
To reach more mass markets Chirokote’s
place. One of the projects we
team analysed how Zimnat handled its distri-
introduced was analytical. We
bution chain as there were obvious limits to
pulled data from all the different
a purely bricks-and-mortar approach when
systems, created dashboards
you’re aiming to reach mass market business.
around it and put some geo-
“We wanted to see if the products needed
graphical context to the data.
to change shape. Would they continue
This encouraged people to spend
to be the same products while in a mass
more time analysing the paying
market environment?
behaviour, trends and distribution
“Instead of the staff sitting back and waiting for the rollout of this big monster we identi-
of customers. This relaxed the working environment, as staff 07
“ We wanted to see if the products needed to change shape. Would they continue to be the same products while in a mass market environment?” — Tendayi Chirokote, Chief Digital Officer
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were now looking at what the data actually meant.” Obviously with increased harvesting and analysis of data comes issues of cybersecurity. Chirokote introduced a number of preventative measures. “The first thing we did was to call in PricewaterhouseCoopers, who did a security audit of our processes, systems, firewalls; the complete architecture. This took two to three months during which they 08
assessed the entire landscape. This outsider’s view of security was essential as it highlighted the
data and put in some standards around the
level we needed to be operating
password policies and internet usage to
at in terms of security.
secure a community where people were start-
“PwC gave us some level of
ing to exchange and move data. The email
comfort that we could actually
platform was also upgraded from an open-
start delving into the data issues
source model to Gmail, so we were essentially
once we had attended to the
outsourcing to an organisation that already
high-risk areas. We updated all
had security structures in place.”
the software updating systems to
The implementation of any new measures
current versions because that
can often cause temporary shifts in process
was a big vulnerability that we
times. Chirokote and his team witnessed
had. Then we updated our poli-
a slight drop in efficiency. “The tightening of
cies which related to a
the environment was now creating slowness
bricks-and-mortar environment.
in terms of productivity. They felt it was inhib-
We looked at the interchange of
iting the way they worked. We strengthened
“ Our agents have said that whatever leads come through Facebook are experiencing a 90% closing rate” — Tendayi Chirokote, Chief Digital Officer
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the password system for exam-
for this by introducing efficiencies.
ple and because people tended
“The digital transformation is currently nine
to forget their passwords, there
months old and so the effect on the bottom
was a lot of sharing, which was
line has not been observed just yet, although
now prohibited.
Zimnat’s reach has improved greatly. The dig-
“With regards to workflow, there
ital marketing side has really come up very
had to be checks and balances in
well, where we are probably reaching out to
place and you couldn’t start and
between 3-400,000 people in the last three
complete a process all by yourself.
months. In terms of leads, 10% of those are
So, all of a sudden you had to wait
leads we can actually chase. Our agents have
for another person to approve
said that whatever leads come through Face-
your work and the team generally
book are experiencing a 90% closing rate.
felt that this whole security busi-
It’s different from when you just knocked on
ness was making things slower.
a door. They now know that 90% of the leads
But the idea was to compensate
generated from the digital channel are likely to w w w. z i m n a t . c o . z w
close, which is a massive positive for the business. “My role at the moment is preparing the technical space to be ready for the full speed digital, which probably won’t be for another 12 months.” Traditionally, Africa has experienced major problems with connectivity and geography proved a problem for Zimnat. “Connectivity has always been a problem here,” Chirokote says. 10
“The cost of data, for which I can actually put to a physical product, is very expensive. You have to ask
and made sure that the digital side was fully
yourself how you can keep costs
employed into the insurance space.”
down for your customers. “But if you keep that cost down,
The millennials are the emerging target for many insurers but for many, as well as those
it reduces the business. So, we
older customers, there is a palpable distrust of
needed to come up with an opti-
insurers after the global economic collapse in
mum solution which wasn’t too
2008 which saw some companies defaulting
expensive. The other challenge
on their responsibilities.
was that we wanted to reach out
“I think the challenge for insurance compa-
to customers who didn’t live in
nies is to create a trust between them and the
the big cities, in areas that are
clients,” Chirokote continues. “Making an
virtually impossible to reach in
insurance sale is very difficult when there is no
a bricks-and-mortar approach.
trust. Because of the uncertainty politically in
We looked at other channels
the country, people would rather hold back
such as the mobile business
and see if things change before committing
“ Millennials don’t feel that they are ever going to die! I think they are more risksavvy however and take a lot of chances” — Tendayi Chirokote, Chief Digital Officer
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and so that has presented a chal-
using insurance as protector of that purchase.
lenge where our penetration rate in
Millennials don’t feel that they are ever going
insurance is down to less than 5%.
to die! I think they are more risk-savvy how-
“But we’re sticking to that
ever and take a lot of chances. I can see a
challenge and coming up with
situation where insurance would make sense
products which speak to the wal-
if you combined it to a saving or investment
let of all the potential customers.
scheme, or to a product that helps someone
Millennials have a different way of
acquire an asset.
thinking, even as far as insurance
“So, insurance has to be more relevant to
is concerned, so from an insur-
the lives of these people rather than waiting for
ance business perspective, the
the risk of death, or a company accident or
insurance space has to be ready,
whatever. I think that’s the direction our prod-
not to sell insurance necessarily,
ucts need to take going into the future.”
but to sell a product that’s relevant to a young person, while w w w. z i m n a t . c o . z w
Zimnat House Corner 3rd Street & Nelson Mandela Avenue P.O. Box 2417 Harare, Zimbabwe T +263 24 701 179/80 www.zimnat.co.zw