It’s a numbers game!

23 million…14 hours…39 years…95 champions…222.9 million…the numbers kept ringing out. Well, you may be forgiven if at first glance these numbers don’t mean much to you. Nearly 20 changemakers representing 15 countries gathered in sunny Manila, Philippines, to kick off the #microinsurancemasters 2024. They aim to push the boundaries over two weeks of immersion in microinsurance: what it is, why it matters and how to do it right. Session by session, the mystery behind the numbers was revealed.

• 23 million: Pioneer served 23 million happy customers in 2023 thanks to its magic formula that takes 1 day to review claims and 5 days to finalize pay-outs. The secret sauce is claims payments and a positive experience that generates a multiplier effect among friends and family by word of mouth.
• 14 hours: This is the largest time difference with the Philippines for some of the participants in this edition. Talk of passion, commitment and grit. Despite hours and hours of travel, all participants from 11 time zones were attentive and energized all through! A colourful kaleidoscope of expertise, nationalities, and organization types is represented by the collective at the Microinsurance Master 2024. Uniting them all is one goal: to unlearn conventional practices to create innovative microinsurance products.
• 39 years: This is the largest number of insurance experience in years among the participants. Combined, all the participants bring together more than 100 years of knowledge and experience. One key takeaway though: in microinsurance, less is more. The less you know about conventional insurance, the more open you will be to challenging norms, assumptions and beliefs as you push towards building new microinsurance products and processes that better serve your customers.

95 champions: To-date, over the past five editions of the Microinsurance Masters, 95 microinsurance champions have emerged. Today, they are key innovators and drivers of change – launching? products and building start-ups – contributing in their own way to reducing the protection gap for the world’s poorest. “Only 222.9 million people had microinsurance in 2022. This represents a massive business opportunity to reach the billions of people in the world that have no insurance. This is a blue ocean,” said Bert Opdebeek, Founder, Microinsurance Master.