Insurance Platform Integration for Mutual Benefits Assurance

Project Overview

Mutual Benefits Assurance Plc stands as one of Nigeria's premier insurance companies with a ₦100B valuation and a strong market presence. As a well-established brand in the Nigerian insurance sector, the company employs over 5,000 professionals, including a large network of marketing executives. Backed by substantial capitalization, a workforce of experienced specialists, and a distinguished board of directors, Mutual Benefits Assurance takes pride in delivering exceptional service to all stakeholders.

The company's significant focus on retail insurance resulted in a vast policyholder base, which subsequently created two critical operational challenges:

1. Efficiently collecting premium payments from thousands of individual policyholders
2. Accurately reconciling these payments with their corresponding insurance policies

These challenges led to substantial business impacts, including delayed commission payments to marketing executives who secured these premiums and an inability to close financial books in a timely manner.

When the CFO of Mutual Benefits Life Assurance Limited (a subsidiary) approached Riskgratis to address these twin problems, we conducted a thorough analysis of their requirements. After evaluating multiple options, we designed and implemented a virtual account service solution leveraging the infrastructure of Mutual Benefits MFB Limited.

Challenges

Mutual Benefits faced several specific challenges in managing their extensive retail insurance operations:

• Complex Premium Collection Process: The large volume of retail policyholders made traditional collection methods inefficient and error-prone.
• Manual Reconciliation Burden: Staff spent excessive time manually matching incoming payments to specific policies, creating a significant operational bottleneck.
• Delayed Financial Reporting: The manual reconciliation process delayed monthly financial closures by at least 15 days into each new month.
• Commission Payment Delays: Marketing executives experienced delayed commission payments due to the slow reconciliation process, potentially affecting morale and performance.
• Resource Allocation Issues: A significant portion of the finance department's resources was dedicated to reconciliation tasks rather than higher-value activities.

Solution

Riskgratis implemented a comprehensive solution that seamlessly integrated the core insurance platform with a virtual account service:

1. Virtual Account System: We designed and implemented a virtual account infrastructure that assigned unique account numbers to individual policyholders.
2. Core System Integration: We created custom integration points between the virtual account system and the core insurance platform to enable automatic data flow.
3. Automated Reconciliation Engine: We developed an intelligent reconciliation engine that automatically matched incoming payments to the correct policies in real-time.
4. Management Dashboard: We built comprehensive reporting dashboards giving finance teams immediate visibility into premium collection status.
5. Payment Gateway Integration: We integrated multiple payment channels to maximize convenience for policyholders making premium payments.

Results

The implementation delivered transformative results across multiple business areas:

• Dramatic Efficiency Improvement: Financial operations efficiency, particularly in collections and reconciliation, improved by approximately 500%.
• Significant Processing Volume: The platform now handles approximately 70% of all retail premium collections for Life Insurance Policies.
• Substantial Transaction Value: The system processes over ₦1.5B monthly, representing a significant portion of the subsidiary's revenue.
• Accelerated Financial Closing: Monthly books can now be closed within 3 days of month-end, compared to the previous 15+ days.
• Optimized Resource Allocation: Staff previously dedicated to manual reconciliation have been redeployed to other finance department functions, enhancing overall productivity.
• Real-Time Reconciliation: Payment reconciliation now occurs instantly rather than requiring days or weeks of manual processing.