Florence Boupda Ngueda, IFC-FIG Global Sector Manager for Insurance, Housing and DARP, joined over 1,000 financial industry leaders at the 2024 Africa Financial Summit, held in December 2024 in Morocco. The two-day event brought together a diverse group of stakeholders – including bankers, insurers, fintech representatives, capital markets experts, mobile money operators, as well as policymakers and regulators from across Africa and beyond – to explore innovative approaches to building a resilient financial services industry across the continent.

 A highlight of the event was the panel discussion “Cracking the code on expanding insurance to the informal sector”, which addressed the critical challenge of boosting Africa’s sub-3% insurance penetration through embedded insurance solutions. Key discussions centered on:

• Evaluating how embedded products can simultaneously drive financial inclusion and maintain financial viability
• Enhancing product design and technological integration to better serve informal sector needs
• Building stronger regulatory collaboration to align embedded finance policies across the region

From left to right: Sana ATTIG, Director, Insurance, Francophone Africa / Deloitte; Florence BOUPDA Ngueda, Global Sector Manager, Financial Institutions Group (FIG), Banking and Insurance / IFC; Gildas N'ZOUBA, Managing Director SUNU Assurances VIE Ivory Coast / Groupe SUNU; Ashok SHAH, CEO / Apollo Investments / APA Insurance; Jean-Louis MENANN-KOUAME, CEO / Orange Bank Africa

Ms. Ngueda emphasized the importance of insurance as a critical component of a healthy financial system and highlighted how achieving broader financial inclusion requires public-private collaboration in both design and implementation. Drawing from IFC experience, she illustrated the challenge of serving a highly diverse client base, ranging from market traders in Lagos to smallholder farmers in Rwanda. These groups face very different risks and share irregular incomes that don't align with traditional premium payment models. Ms. Ngueda explained that leveraging data could help create more inclusive insurance business models, enabling the development of new products, pricing strategies, and improved customer engagement. At the same time, she noted the diversity of Africa, which requires thoughtful regulatory frameworks in each market with the aim to both protect consumers and encourage innovation, while acknowledging the unique challenges each market presents. She emphasized that the focus should be on fostering open communication between regulators and industry players both within each market and at pan-African level.

To read more about the event, please visit the official site here.

The Summit also marked the signing of a partnership agreement between the IFC and reinsurer ZEP-RE (PTA Reinsurance Company) to support the launch of digital insurance solutions aimed at mitigating climate risks, such as floods, natural disasters, and other shocks, for smallholder farmers and agri-sector SMEs across multiple African countries. As part of the agreement, IFC will provide advisory services to ZEP-RE, helping them expand their outreach to farmers and tailor insurance coverage to better meet their needs. To read the full announcement, please click here.