African fintech aYo Holdings is transforming its technology back end and data management approach as it gears up to drive greater scale, better customer experience and faster access to markets across the African continent in the coming years.
The company already has more than 15 million customers using its microinsurance products across Uganda, Ghana, Zambia and Côte d'Ivoire, and Group CEO Marius Botha says its vision is to grow into the largest financial services technology platform in Africa by enabling the distribution of a range of affordable and accessible micro financial services products.
aYo and its shareholder, MTN, are currently working on the final details of a partnership with a new insurance group for access to more underwriter licenses in order to expand its product range and penetrate more markets.
“We see ourselves as a technology company first and foremost, that happens to sell microinsurance now. As our customers transition to a world where financial services are easily accessible via mobile phone and transacted via apps and other channels, we need to respond with a platform business model that will allow us to scale rapidly and cost-effectively manage material volumes of nano transactions,” said Botha.
Part of this technology evolution has seen aYo transition to a cloud data warehousing approach using Snowflake as a solution as it looks to deal with growing volumes of customer data.
“Data is a key asset that we want to grow and leverage, as it will allow us to drive better outcomes and value for our customers. Moving into a new generation data warehousing capability gives us the ability to analyse usable data faster, and build automated models for particular use cases, like more granular target market segmentation, retention strategies and targeted customer propositions,” said Botha.
Choice of technology plays a critical role in ensuring the affordability of micro financial services by driving ‘frictional costs’ out of the system, like the costings involved in using legacy tools and processes, or online physical hosting solutions. A solution like Snowflake helps the company to scale up and down according to demand, and makes it easier to build real-time reporting capabilities which are key strategic aims.
“We’re excited to be experimenting with world-class technologies that help accelerate our vision to enable first-time access to financial services for many African consumers, and bring them into the economic mainstream. That’s where insurtechs are truly contributing to financial inclusion across the continent, and making a positive difference to people’s lives,” said Botha.