On Tuesday, February third, Girls’s World Banking hosted a webinar on greatest practices in advertising microinsurance merchandise. It was a fantastic alternative for practitioners in microfinance and different monetary business gamers to listen to from consultants on the significance of market analysis and the way it informs product innovation and advertising primarily based on Girls’s World Banking’s experiences in 5 international locations. The panel was composed of Fadi Al-Tawabini, Advertising and Enterprise Improvement Supervisor from Microfund for Girls in Jordan and Cathleen Tobin, Director of Product Improvement at Girls’s World Banking. Karen Miller, Chief Information and Communications Officer at Girls’s World Banking moderated the dialogue.
In accordance with Ms. Miller, underlying Girls’s World Banking’s work world wide is a deep understanding of what their purchasers want. This deal with analysis has allowed the group and its international community of 38 establishments in 28 international locations to construct the appropriate sort of economic merchandise together with the advertising and monetary training methods to help the enlargement of those merchandise.
Girls’s World Banking kicked of its microinsurance program in 2010 when it partnered with Microfund for Girls to develop a microinsurance product referred to as Caregiver. Caregiver is a hospital cash-type coverage the place purchasers obtain compensation in case of in a single day hospitalization. A big distinction between Caregiver and different conventional hospital money insurance coverage, Mr. Al-Tawabini highlighted, is that there are not any exclusions, no pre-medical exams, and all hospitals are included beneath the coverage.
Recognizing that buyers’ consciousness of merchandise’ options and advantages is crucial, and contemplating that insurance coverage merchandise in and of themselves are obscure, Girls’s World Banking collaborated with Microfund for Girls to develop a communications marketing campaign that mixed academic data with the usual promotional components of selling supplies. Given the excessive literacy charge in Jordan and the upper degree of consciousness of the idea of insurance coverage, the workforce designed a one-page advertising brochure that doubled because the consumer’s coverage doc. Other than itemizing the coverage advantages in clear and easy language, the brochure included a cartoon of two girls chatting and sharing concepts concerning the options and advantages of the product.
As a result of consciousness and notion of insurance coverage varies enormously from market to market, Ms. Tobin underscored the necessity to adapt one’s advertising method to handle these variations. As an illustration in Uganda, there’s a low understanding of how insurance coverage works, no consciousness of medical insurance merchandise, and a damaging notion about insurance coverage as a complete. As such, it was essential for the advertising marketing campaign to teach purchasers how insurance coverage works. For Al Amana in Morocco then again, the place notion of insurance coverage is constructive and understanding of insurance coverage is excessive however consciousness of their product, Tayssir, was low, the advertising focus was on the particular advantages of the product and to remind purchasers to avail of those advantages.
Past informing purchasers of insurance coverage, calling purchasers to motion and serving to them perceive how one can entry these advantages is one other key pillar on the advertising course of. Within the case of Morocco, Girls’s World Banking and Al Amana used symbols primarily based on the Caregiver brochure for instance Tayssir’s advantages and created completely different promotional supplies comparable to stickers with the insurance coverage contact, mortgage playing cards and key chains to bolster the messages at a number of contact factors to name purchasers into motion.
These experiences supply fascinating insights into the highly effective use of promotional supplies to teach purchasers on a posh product comparable to insurance coverage in various markets. Constructing on these experiences, Girls’s World Banking is presently working with 4 establishments to pilot or launch their insurance coverage merchandise: particular person and household protection with Al Amana in Morocco; a hospital money product in 5 branches of Finance Belief Financial institution in Uganda; a one-of-its-kind composite credit score life and money microinsurance product with Lead Basis in Egypt; and in Peru, supporting the event of a well being and life insurance coverage program with Caja Arequipa. Girls’s World Banking can also be working with Microfund for Girls to develop a savings-linked insurance coverage product, which is presently in its analysis part.
As Ms. Miller from Girls’s World Banking highlighted, it takes just one main sickness for a girl to decapitalize her enterprise, expend her financial savings or cease paying her kids’s college charges. From Girls’s World Banking’s perspective, there’s nice potential in providing Caregiver, and merchandise prefer it, to girls, because it supplies a crucial security web for emergencies and reduces surprising monetary shocks on a girl’s life.