Pula, a pan-africana leading agricultural technology company operating in Kenya, Nigeria and Zambia that develops and provides crops and livestock insurance last Friday scooped the continent’s InsurTech company of the year award during the 6th annual African Insurance Awards held in Lagos, Nigeria.
The Insurtech award which targets non-insurers collaborating with insurers to improve customer service delivery, product development and innovation was organised by the African Reinsurance Corporation (Africa Re).
The company was recognised for successfully managing over 4.3 million smallholder farmers through their Area Yield Index Insurance product. It provides insurance services and digital solutions to farmers in 12 countries in Africa, with Nigeria being the leading market for Pula.
The company uses the crop cut experiment as a claim assessment procedure instead of just relying on satellite data as a means of compensation trigger. This assessment relies heavily on actual crop cuts exercise at the farmer level and feedback is fed on enumerators pula mobile apps which relay instant after harvest season feedback to clients monitoring dashboards.
Pula also embeds Insurance in products and services that farmers use: seeds, fertilisers, paygo solar products and credits from financial institutions.
On accepting the award, Pula’s Co-founder Ms Rose Goslinga, said the award was a testimony of the company’s vision of building resilience and profitability for smallholder farmers across Africa who help drive GDP of the continent.
She noted that with time, agricultural insurance will be a necessity product that will help transform the agriculture industry in Africa owing to the fact that Agriculture in Africa affected by several risks including pests and diseases and climate change.
“With this award we are more optimistic that agricultural insurance will be a necessity product that will help transform agriculture industry in Africa .We look forward as we close the year and begin a new year to partner with more Africa Governments and private sector to help drive the uptake of agriculture insurance and drive resilience for an additional 10Million farmers” Rose Goslinga -Co-Founder said after the award,” Ms Goslinga said.
Pula partners in Nigeria with leading Insurance companies such as Leadway Assurance and Veritas Kapital to help derisk the millions of Nigerian small holder farmers.Through such partnerships, pula has been able to make agriculture insurance accessible to a number of smallholder farmers who found insurance expensive and hard to acquire.
In 2020 Pula worked with the Central bank of Nigeria Anchor programme to help derisk the millions of smallholder farmers in Nigeria.This season alone after the flood catastrophe that hit Nigeria,Pula is processing over one billion Naira to be paid to over 15,774 farmers drawn across Rice, Maize and Cotton Farmers.
Apart from CBN some of Pula clients in Nigeria have been Babban Gona, Flower Mills of Nigeria , NIRSAL Plc and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Apart from insurance, Pula bundles digital services for the insured farmers to help train them on better planting practices and early warning signs which is disseminated via sms.
“We want to send a big shout out to the dedicated staff of Pula, Partners, Investors, Insurers and smallholder farmers that we work with,” Ms Goslinga added.
On top of the area yield insurance, Pula bundles digital services for the insured farmers eg sms agronomical tips during the planting season.
