Dar es Salaam. Tanzania’s insurance industry needs to move beyond simply creating new products and focus on making insurance affordable, accessible and relevant to underserved customers, industry players have said.
The views were shared during a session on ‘Closing the Protection Gap: Innovation, Investment and Inclusive Insurance’ at Innovation Week Tanzania 2026 in Dar es Salaam.
The session brought together insurers, regulators and technology innovators to examine how new business models and distribution channels could expand insurance coverage.
Reinsurance Manager at MUA Insurance Tanzania, Susan Massaga, said the starting point for innovation should be understanding why people remain uninsured rather than adding more products to the market.
“Innovation is a mindset. You have to be ready, you have to want innovation and before it becomes a product, you have to be open-minded enough to want to do the change,” she said.
Ms Massaga said insurers needed to establish whether products already available were meeting the needs of farmers, low-income earners and other underserved groups.
“Protection will not go simply because we create more insurance products. We have to understand why people are still not being reached,” she said.
She said affordability should remain central to product development because customers have different financial capacities, while stronger cooperation was needed across the industry.
“The protection gap is the challenge and no single insurer can do it alone. So we need insurers, reinsurers, brokers, development partners and distribution partners, all of us need to be moving in the same direction,” she said.
The challenge was illustrated by the experience of Twende Technologies Limited, which operates a digital transport platform serving more than 10,000 boda-boda riders across several regions.
Managing Director of Twende Technologies Limited, Justin Kishaigili, said many riders, most aged between 18 and 35, lacked comprehensive financial protection despite facing multiple risks.
“We realised that there is a challenge because these drivers on our platform are boda-boda drivers aged between 18 and 35, but when they reach more than 50 they may no longer have the strength to ride. Currently, they have no insurance and are financially excluded and have no pension plan,” he said.
Mr Kishaigili said the riders’ needs went beyond accident cover to include life insurance, health protection, pensions and insurance for goods transported through their work.
For the regulator, innovation also requires an environment where new ideas can be tested without exposing the wider market to unnecessary risks.
Tanzania Insurance Regulatory Authority (TIRA) Manager for Planning and Research Edgar Shao said the authority had introduced a regulatory sandbox where innovators could test new products under controlled conditions.
“The sandbox has been designed to bring on board both the innovator and the regulator to learn together on the product. We are not sure how it works and we don’t know the risks involved, so we are saying let’s create a controlled room where we can test,” he said.
Agricultural insurance and agribusiness development specialist Christopher Mazali said innovation could also make insurance viable for groups traditionally considered difficult to serve, including sugar-cane farmers and waste pickers.
He said innovation did not always mean creating entirely new products, but could involve simplifying existing ones and adapting them to customers’ ability to pay and specific risks.
“Sometimes you think you need to create this entirely new product, but the products are there. The needs that he’s talking about are products that already exist. What you have to think about is how do I make my product simple,” he said.
Mr Mazali also identified data as critical to expanding coverage, saying digital platforms could help insurers understand customers who had previously been difficult to assess. “Data is an issue, but it does not mean that you have to stop; it means that you have to find a way to make it work,” he said.
Ms Massaga cautioned that even an innovative idea could fail if its underlying economics did not work, making affordability and sustainability as important as the technology behind the product.
