Let’s talk honestly for a moment.
In countless industry panels, conferences, and boardroom meetings, I’ve heard the same narrative over and over again:
“The problem is that customers don’t understand insurance.”
It’s almost a mantra now. We say it so often, we barely stop to question it.
But I think we need to.
Because what if the real problem isn’t that customers don’t understand insurance… but that the insurance industry was never really built to understand them?
Let that sit for a moment.
The “blame game” we keep playing
It’s easy, almost too easy, to point fingers at customers when we talk about low insurance penetration in Africa.
We say they don’t trust insurance.
We say they don’t see its value.
We say they don’t know how it works.
We say they expect it to solve problems it wasn’t designed for.
But have we ever stopped to ask: Did we ever design it for them in the first place?
Did we build policies that actually address the risks they face daily?
Did we communicate in a language they understand, not just the words, but the concepts?
Did we offer payment structures that reflect their cash flows?
Did we factor in the cultural dynamics of how they make decisions about money and risk?
Did we provide agents with the tools to educate and support them properly, or did we throw them into the market and expect them to “sell”?
When you really think about it, much of insurance in Africa still looks like a system transplanted from somewhere else, slapped onto contexts it was never meant for, like a suit that doesn’t quite fit.
We took a model designed in London or New York, brought it to Lagos, Nairobi, or Accra, and then wondered why people aren’t lining up to buy policies.
The reality on the ground
I’ve spent years talking to agents and customers across the continent.
I’ve heard the stories.
A boda boda rider in Kampala who needs a daily health cover, not an annual policy.
A farmer in Eldoret who needs weather-indexed crop insurance, but the policy on offer is for an urban car owner.
A mother in Kumasi who wants funeral cover but can’t access it because the paperwork is a nightmare.
A market trader in Gikomba who earns in small bursts and can’t commit to fixed monthly premiums.
These people aren’t “uneducated about insurance.” They’re smart. They understand risk, probably better than most of us sitting in offices. They live with risk every day. They’re calculating trade-offs all the time.
What they don’t understand is why insurance doesn’t seem to speak their language.
Why it feels like it wasn’t made for them.
The industry that forgets to listen
Here’s the hard truth:
We, as an industry, haven’t been listening.
We’ve been so focused on products, premiums, compliance, and profits that we forgot to sit down with the people we’re trying to serve and ask:
“What do you need from insurance?”
We forgot to design with them, not just for them.
We forgot that financial inclusion isn’t about dumping products into markets, it’s about building systems that meet people where they are.
The real question we should be asking
So maybe it’s time we stopped asking,
“Why don’t customers understand insurance?”
And started asking,
“Why hasn’t the insurance industry taken the time to understand the customer?”
Because here’s the thing:
- It’s not the customer’s job to decode complex policy wordings written in legalese.
- It’s not the customer’s job to navigate claims processes designed to frustrate.
- It’s not the customer’s job to chase after agents for payouts that never come.
- It’s not the customer’s job to fit into an outdated system.
It’s our job, as industry players, to create an industry that understands their lives, their realities, their fears, and their dreams.
The opportunity in front of us
If we flip the script, if we truly design for the customer’s world, not just our own, we unlock massive potential.
We can create insurance products that feel like a safety net, not a gamble.
We can build trust by showing up consistently, not just during sales pitches.
We can use technology not just to digitize processes, but to humanize them.
We can empower agents to educate, not just sell.
And maybe, just maybe, we can finally move beyond that tired excuse of
“customers don’t understand insurance” and build an industry that says, “we finally took the time to understand you.”
A call to the industry
To my fellow founders, insurers, brokers, agents, and regulators:
If we want to see real growth in this industry, if we want to increase penetration, build trust, and unlock the true power of insurance, then we need to stop blaming customers for not understanding insurance.
We need to start building systems that are designed to understand them. That’s where the real change begins.
