Mulili: We’re in the Process of Investing Heavily in Modernising Our System

The Chief Digital Officer in Leadway Holdings, Ms. Diana Mulili, in this interview with Adedayo Akinwale reveals that Leadway Assurance is in the process of investing heavily in modernising its systems through the different technologies used within the business. Excerpts:

Tell us about yourself and what you are into?

My name is Diana Mulili, currently the Chief Digital Officer at Leadway Holdings — that’s a financial services group that has Leadway Assurance, Leadway Pension, Leadway Asset Management, Leadway Capital and Trust. We have our L’eola hotels in that, we have Leadway in Cote d’Ivoire and in the next five years, you’re going to see us expanding quite rapidly. So, given the anticipated growth of the industry across different markets.

What does digital marketing do? Can you explain in detail?

Where do I start? I believe that the future economies will all be digital. We already see this. We interact largely on digital platforms currently. How we message each other, how we purchase now is more digital. Our governments, even across Africa are moving to become e-governments and more businesses are digitizing their processes. So it’s a way of being for businesses. And with digital business, you’re migrating what has been a very traditional industry. Insurance specifically has been rather traditional with the agents, the brokers that we use, which are fantastic, which are still fantastic distribution models. But now we are adding a layer to that to make it easier for our customers to reach us, because accessibility has been an issue for the longest time, as well as affordability, which is why, from a retail perspective, when you look at insurance, we have such a low penetration of insurance in Nigeria, it’s less than one per cent. It is very low.

How do you want to leverage this technology to improve your business?

I’ll walk you through the process. So we start with understanding our customers better, and that involves looking at our customer data, collating it, cleaning it up, to creating data sets. Then our systems can analyse to tell us what does Dayo faces as his day-to-day risk? What products is he currently purchasing has he claimed before? Does he have a family? Is he likely to grow the family who are his dependant? So you can understand Dayo more and map out all the possible risks, because that is what insurance does. It helps you manage different risks in your life. It helps you protect yourself against those risks. And if we understand Dayo better, then we are able to personalise what we come to you with.

We will be very specific in the product that we, our agents, or maybe our digital agents will come to you with. Saying Dayo, you have a young family you probably need a mini health insurance of some sort. That’s just an example that we’re giving. And also creating micro products, because remember, going back to beyond accessibility, affordability, we’ve done market research as part of understanding customers across Nigeria better, and we find out that affordability is key.

So, if we personalise the product and we help you pick and choose what you need, then you don’t have to pay very expensive premiums for our services. Now, when it comes to accessibility, we have a fantastic agency force of over 3,000 agents and we have fantastic workers in the market. But what customers ask for right now, what customers demand is you meet them where they are. Where are most customers right now? On their phones, right? So with regard to accessibility, it’s having digital platforms, whether that’s through an app or our website or the different digital assets that we have. Like we have our IG (Instagram) handle, we have our LinkedIn, if we are there around you, it’s easy for you to reach us, because what we have is the ability for you to either purchase products online or reach out to us, DM (Direct Message) us, and we have somebody call you back or message you within a few hours. And that’s part of the digital journeys that we are creating for our customers to enable them have access. But beyond that, what else we’re doing is working with different partners across the ecosystem. And what do I mean by that? We realise that when it comes to financial services, it’s not really considered a priority in the hierarchy of needs for a typical African. Very few individuals wake up and say, I want to go and buy insurance. Unless the government is forcing you, like for your car. So what we envision is embedding insurance products in your day-to-day products and services that you consume. I’ll give you the most basic example that’s trending right now. Like you said, we have mobile phone penetration.
So when you’re purchasing your mobile phone, imagine if you didn’t even have to be told that there’s insurance that you can purchase at that point of purchase. Imagine if it was already priced in, so you know when you’re buying your phone from whichever dealer, you already covered for a possible cracked screen. If you have the next six to 12 months your screen cracks, you can visit any of these outlets, and it will be replaced for you. That’s embedded insurance, because you’re not being told that this product is over and above. You’re not being told to pay extra money. We’ve already worked with the OEM or the distributors to price-in the insurance very well. Because if we embed it, that means that we are reducing how much people have to pay because we’re going for volumes and it makes it easier.

What would you say is inherent advantages of this technology for Leadway

For Leadway, what we like to do is move away from all of us scrambling for the same pie. The market is small. If we keep scrambling for the same market size, it becomes a slippery slope of price wars. We want to create new markets. So we’re aiming for penetration, including new market segments so that we can all create a win-win for the customers, as well as for the industry so that the industry can grow, because financial services are the backbone of all economies. So if you have a stable financial service sector in your country, it’s an indication of growth. And if you can provide the means for the populace to protect itself, then, we are adding value to the populace. Because going back to what are we in the business of? We are in the business of protecting you against risks that we’ve calculated are possible in your day-to-day life. And if we protect you, that means that we have to be there to pay the claim. So in Leadway, we say we are in the business of paying claims, that’s our business idea.

*What noble idea of trying to disrupt the system, I must commend Leadway for it. But this must have come with challenges. What are those challenges?

Challenges are massive. First, I can say that creating consortium partnerships that will lead to this disruption is a long-term play. Well, not long term like five years, but in our day-to-day, it’s considered long term because you’re impatient for results. But if we want to solve local problems with this, we want to solve our own African problems that are unique to us, that are nuanced, that are peculiar to Africans, and that takes time, because that means that we have to immerse ourselves in the day-to-day lives of Nigerians. Or whichever country we’re gonna be, whichever market segment we choose, and understand the pain points really well so that we can create a product that solves those pain points. Because if we don’t want to be a product first. We don’t want to come and push our product to Dayo. We want to understand Dayo’s pains, then we create the product, we come back to you, adding more value to you.

As a Kenyan, what informed your decision to relocate to Nigeria?

I was in another financial service company before, that’s Prudential. I was in the Africa team building the digital ecosystem for the potential across Africa. And so as part of my immersion, I got to understand where the anchor markets are. Anchor anchor market for this industry in Sub-saharan Africa, and, you know — the two anchors —Kenya and Nigeria. So when I got the opportunity through Leadway CEO, now group CEO to come and roll my sleeves up in what is considered a tough market. I took it because I said, If I can do it here, this is a home of African unicorns, true or false — Flutterwave, Monie Point, the most recent one. We’ve had fantastic unicorns coming out of here. So my hypothesis is that if we can make this digital business work for this financial service group, then we can make it work anywhere and any other market. And that is our intention. We start from here, and we scale outwards with adaptability, of course, in the different markets, but we prove it here first.

This market has evolved. So how has it evolved in the past years?

So we are seeing a proliferation of insurtechs and they’re really working to make strides in providing insurance solutions at scale, at affordable rates. And that’s a possible disruption to our very traditional industry, and I say possible, let me tell you why I say possible. Because, you remember what I said, what we are in the business of? Paying claims, that’s always a tricky bit, because customers need to trust that you will be there when they need you. That’s exactly why people don’t even buy insurance in the first place. They are not sure if you’ll be there when they’ll need you to pay that claim. They actually think that they give you their money and you’re running away to pocket it. That’s how they think about insurance. So, trust and credibility are so critical, and for you to build trust and credibility, it takes time.
Leadway has been here for over 50 years. We’ve built the credibility that we are here to serve the needs of our customers. We have demonstrated that we pay our claims over and over again. So, all we really need to do is leverage on the technology so that our processes can now catch up with the times, because legacy systems do tend to slow us down. But we are in the process of investing heavily in modernising our systems, the different technologies that we use within the business, and even, using AI to make us more efficient and to know our customers better. But the work has to be done, and that’s what people don’t understand. You know, we keep talking about AI, but the groundwork, the foundational work that has to be done is a lot. Because AI only works when the data sets are in there and it’s clean data sets, because garbage in, garbage out. So, if your data sets are not complete, they are not clean, what are you getting? You won’t get insights that help you make better decisions.

It seems Africa is being left behind in this push, so what technique will advise?

I actually would like to take a different view of that one, because it’s not about where the idea originates from. It’s about who utilizes it to leverage what they have, and we can see that Africa has been at the forefront of adopting technologies. We leapfrog from relying on landline phones to mobile phone coverage that is at what percent. We have good mobile phone connectivity and coverage. Of course, we have our challenges, because if the ecosystem does not enable our innovators to thrive, then we do tend to slow down. But in the conversations I’ve had with different partners, and this includes government, this includes regulators, this includes international organisations, development agencies, people want to collaborate more to solve the socio economic challenges that Africa faces. There is a spirit of collaboration across industries and I believe that’s the future. When we start collaborating so that the ecosystem works for us and we actually trust that we have the capacity and the capability to solve our own problems so that we can stop relying on outside help. We have the talent here. It Doesn’t matter where the frameworks or the technology comes from honestly. Look at where China started off from, copying. Have you seen the new Huawei phone that has been trending? It’s being hailed as being better than iPhones, but they started from copying. So I’m not really stuck on whether we haven’t developed the AI technology ourselves, but my question is, how are we going to utilize it? Where are we going to focus on? We have to focus it on solving our challenges, solving our real day to day problems, even at levels like agriculture. Can you start seeing agrotechs coming up? Because we’ve seen fintechs. I would love to see agrotex growing because of AI. I believe that the future of all businesses, industries is that they will be information businesses led by data. Because we know now data is gold, data is a new black oil. We’ve also seen more adoptions, more disruptions and that’s what I’d like to see. We disrupt our own selves. Let’s not wait for the disruption to come from outside. Let’s disrupt ourselves by utilizing these technologies that are there for us. Move beyond the Large Language Models (LLMs), we all use chat GPT, and start adopting more of the Large Quantitative Models (LQMs), which is where you use your own quantitative data. Have the AI process quantitative data so that you can have your own unique results that depend on your own data sets.