Casava, which offers a 100% digital insurance service, has secured pre-seed funding of $4 million to support its business expansion.  The company is touted as the first-ever to offer 100% digital insurance services in Nigeria.

“Our mission is to provide affordable insurance for Nigerians and other Africans and we are happy to have raised these funds from an exciting group of investors,” said Bode Pedro (pictured), founder and CEO of the company.

These funds are the first the company has received since its founding in 2016. Casava is taking advantage of the expense savings offered by the digital, allowing potential or confirmed customers to purchase work or health insurance premiums online. “The Casava team has developed a unique and disruptive product that we believe has the potential to transform Africa’s insurance market,” said Avi Eyal, General Partner at Entrée Capital, one of the venture capital firms that contributed to the fundraising.

In the risk coverage segments in which Casava operates, there is an opportunity in terms of digitization of services, as many workers are often underemployed, with no protection against the risks of business interruption and thus technical unemployment, and the risks of illness. According to the Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics, 20% of workers have lost their jobs due to Covid-19 and many of them in small trades have not received compensation.

The digitalization of insurance services in Nigeria has been growing in recent years. The potential size of the market in terms of subscribers (95% of the 33% of social network subscribers) is an opportunity, but technological solutions will have to go beyond technical issues and address substantive challenges such as the lack of trust between insurers and policyholders, ease of premium payments, but also reimbursements in case of claims. These are all issues that will need to be monitored.