START-UPS AND MOBILE IN EMERGING MARKETS: INSIGHTS FROM THE GSMA ECOSYSTEM ACCELERATOR START-UPS AND MOBILE IN EMERGING

START-UPS AND MOBILE IN EMERGING MARKETS: INSIGHTS FROM THE GSMA ECOSYSTEM ACCELERATOR

Case Study 1

Jamii: Making mobile health insurance How the service works

affordable for SMEs and low-income The platform is integrated with mobile money
(Vodacom M-Pesa) to provide cashless payments
on a monthly basis and Jamii retains
an administration fee. The service is accessible

populations in Tanzania when the user3 pays for the policy and when the
insurer pays the hospital. Users pay for their policies
by mobile phone through USSD. This is how
the service works:

Founding year 2016

Registering with Jamii
Geography Tanzania
SME customer registration (companies Individual/family and micro-
Team Lilian Makoi – Founder and CEO
with fewer than 50 employees): entrepreneur customer registration:
Rayah Ndagire – COO (GSMA Grant Manager)

1 1
Business description Jamii is a mobile micro-health insurance product The SME representative dials the M-Pesa User registers for the
in a tweet: for SMEs1 and individuals in the informal economy. main menu, registers for the Jamii service micro-health insurance
(SME name, full names of employees, region), by dialling the Jamii
www.jamiiafrica.com chooses a policy type and the duration of USSD short code [USSD
the insurance policy. The representative then *150*00#].
selects how many members they would like to
In Tanzania, fewer than 30 per cent of the country’s are given access to hospital services that fall within pay for.
52 million people have access to health insurance.2 their policy limit. However, there are no limitations

2 2
Jamii's platform calculates the insurance User selects a policy
The remaining 70 per cent, who often work in the on the type of services they can receive. The policy
premium for all the individuals selected by the (from 12 options) and
informal economy, must pay for health services every includes dental, eye and maternity treatment, doctor SME and the SME representative then pays for pays via mobile money
time they need them. Due to high administration consultations, medicine and X-rays. To reduce the policy using M-Pesa (for each registered (M-Pesa).
costs, large insurance companies rarely serve small administration costs (by up to 95 per cent), Jamii employee).

3 3
enterprises or Tanzanians earning less than $100 is relying on a mobile policy management platform
Jamii's agent collects employee data through User is issued a unique
a month. and on mobile money to collect premiums and pay the Jamii app and the SME representative Jamii ID number via
out claims. receives an employee ID number allocated SMS.
Jamii was founded in 2016 to allow low-income by Jamii for each registered employee.
populations and workers in the informal sector to As of July 2018, over 6,400 people have been

4
access affordable healthcare financing schemes. covered by health insurance offered through Jamii The system sends each end user covered by the
policy an SMS with the user’s Jamii ID number,
and 2,900 people have made health insurance claims
Jamii offers micro-health insurance services with which benefits can be accessed, and a list
through the platform. Two hundred hospitals have of nearest hospitals that accept Jamii health
plans starting at around $1 per month per person. been enrolled and this number is set to grow to 750 insurance.
The start-up, in collaboration with Jubilee Insurance by March 2019. Jamii initially deployed its service in
and Vodacom Tanzania, offers 12 different cover four regions of Tanzania — Mwanza, Mbeya, Arusha
levels depending on the number of people in the and Kilimanjaro. Jamii services became available
organisation or family. When users sign up, they nationwide in August 2018.
Access to Healthcare Benefits

1 4
User goes to a listed hospital with User receives an
FIGURE 1 their Jamii ID. SMS with the real-
time balance of
health insurance and
Number of people benefiting from health transactions of benefits
insurance provided through Jamii
5,935 6,389
2
claimed..
Hospital attendant enters the user’s Jamii ID

5
5,467 5,817 number into the Jamii mobile application to Jamii’s insurance
4,633 verify the user’s details (full name, date of birth, group partner, Jubilee
Number of people

Insurance, pays
7,000
3,813 gender, policy subscribed to, up-to-date status
of benefits claimed). hospitals via mobile
5,250 3,124 money (M-Pesa) within

3
2,332 User is given access to medical services within seven days of the claim
3,500
1,732 their policy limit and can register and book an being submitted and
1,750 892 appointment with a doctor. approved.

Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Find out more about Jamii's health cover options
2017 2017 2017 2017 2017 2017 2017 2018 2018 2018

1 Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) 3 A user is defined as the policy holder, who is subscribed to and pays (directly or through an employer) for Jamii services.
2 Policy Forum Tanzania, 2016, “Visioning Access to Health Insurance in Tanzania: Opportunities and Challenges”,
https://www.policyforum-tz.org/visioning-access-health-insurance-tanzania-opportunities-and-challenges.
 START-UPS AND MOBILE IN EMERGING MARKETS: INSIGHTS FROM THE GSMA ECOSYSTEM ACCELERATOR START-UPS AND MOBILE IN EMERGING MARKETS: INSIGHTS FROM THE GSMA ECOSYSTEM ACCELERATOR

Working with mobile operators Changing lives

In April 2017, Vodacom Tanzania and Jamii entered Vodacom supports Jamii through co-branding and
a revenue-sharing partnership. Jamii is listed on below-the-line marketing efforts. This includes cross- As of July 2018, 3,820 potentially fatal cases of curable diseases
Vodacom’s mobile money (M-Pesa) menu, which selling and targeted SMS campaigns to Vodacom have been treated thanks to Jamii micro health insurance service.
Jamii uses to collect premiums and pay out micro customers on the benefits of using Jamii. The Sixty per cent of claims were for the treatment of malaria and
insurance claims to hospitals. M-Pesa has played Vodacom team advises Jamii on product design and cholera. 102 hospital births have also been covered by Jamii,
a significant role in cutting the administration costs operations. Vodacom has also provided above-the- reducing the risks associated with home births.
of supplying insurance to Jamii’s customers by line marketing support and exposure through radio
95 per cent. and TV adverts, billboards and online media.

Jamii’s solution empowers the underserved to stay healthy, and

ultimately economically productive, through access to medical care.
“As Vodacom Tanzania, we partnered Jamii enables SMEs to retain their employees by providing them
with Jamii as we saw the demand in with affordable health insurance benefits. A survey with forty-three
SMEs using Jamii has shown that employee turnover has declined
the micro health insurance space that by 35 per cent and productivity has increased by 22 per cent.
we had not ventured into before as
a telecom company. The partnership
allows us to complement our existing
corporate social responsibility seeing “Jamii helped me pay for my medical bills while
that we not only provide the usual I was sick with malaria and I am now able to look
after my business and family. Before I used to
MNO services, but are also able to avail spend money from my small business to treat
affordable micro health insurance to the myself and my son but with Jamii I paid very
informal sector, which in turn reduces little money yet I have a shield over my health.”

our churn rate and increases M-Pesa Mariam, Vegetable Cart Vendor, Mbeya region,
Subscribe and buy a Jamii cover to take
care of your health.
usage. The partnership with Jamii is Tanzania.

rather exemplary and we are positive

we will replicate the same in other
countries where Vodacom is present in
a bid to serve the underserved through Working with the GSMA Ecosystem Accelerator
a cashless and paperless micro health
Jamii received a grant from the GSMA Ecosystem Beyond funding, the Ecosystem Accelerator
insurance product.” Accelerator Innovation Fund in February 2018 to supports Jamii in deepening its partnerships with
expand its service nationwide with a marketing mobile operators in Tanzania and facilitating more
— Vincent Ndekana Polycarp campaign, set up a dedicated call centre for SMEs partnerships with mobile operators abroad. By the
and micro-entrepreneurs, improve their onboarding end of the project in March 2019, Jamii plans to cover
Head of M-Commerce Product process and enrol more hospitals. more than 100,000 people with health insurance —
Dial the M-Pesa menu (*150*00#) and Development and Marketing over 49,000 of whom would be women — and give
them access to a network of 750 hospitals and 375
Vodacom Tanzania
pay via M-Pesa/no transaction fees.

pharmacies across Tanzania.