Prudential Life Insurance Ghana (PLIG) has recorded outstanding growth and chalked several successes from its entry into the Ghanaian life insurance services sector in 2014 till date making it a force to be reckoned with in the industry.
Prudential Life is a wholly owned subsidiary of Prudential Plc, with operations in Europe, US and Asia. The business helps individuals to de-risk their lives and deal with their biggest financial concerns through life and health insurance and retirement and asset management solutions. With over 170 years of heritage and expertise, Prudential Plc has 20 million customers and is listed on the stock exchanges in London, Hong Kong, Singapore and New York.
In Ghana, Prudential Life is one of the top 5 life insurance companies in terms of market share. It has employed over 150 staff, has 1,800 agents, 900,000 customers and operates in 12 branches nationwide.
Prudential is consistently developing and designing its product portfolio around customer needs to enable them look into the future with confidence. These long-term savings and protection solutions cover financial planning for education, endowment, covering incidental expenses due to hospitalization, insurance for travel, insuring against the risk of critical illness, disability, death or critical life events such as the Covid-19 cover for individuals and groups.
Business Growth
As a continuance from its consistent high performance over the preceding 4 years, which made the industry sit up and pay attention to this new entrant, 2019 was no exception.
In all key performance indicators, Prudential stood tall, recording a Gross Written Premium (GWP) in excess of GHS 116 million for 2019, 43% above prior year. It also recorded an Annual Premium Equivalent (APE) in excess of GHS 93 million, 45% above that of 2018. New business premiums grew by 19% over the prior year and the agency force grew to over 1,800, 40% over the previous year.
The Company’s average growth per year from 2014 when it started, to 2019 in terms of Gross Written Premium (GWP) is 49%, in terms of Annual Premium Equivalent (APE) is 58% and in terms of manpower is 25%
Emmanuel Mokobi Aryee, CEO at Prudential Life said “I attribute our success to the support of a dream team made up of a highly skilled, young, dynamic staff and a competent board chaired by Prof. Agyeman Badu Akosa, who all strive to achieve a common goal. A hunger to succeed and to make an impact that honours our purpose of helping people get the most out of life, drives all of our actions”.
Partnerships
With an unrivalled track record of building market-leading life insurance businesses by forging successful partnerships, Prudential combines its strong agency network with committed bank partnerships. In Ghana, Prudential has 5 bank partnerships (Société Générale Bank, Fidelity Bank, CalBank, Zenith Bank and Standard Chartered Bank), the highest for any insurance company. This gives Prudential a combined access to over 1.3million customers in over 170 branches across the country.
To drive financial inclusion, insurance uptake and give customers choice, access and value, Prudential has invested in quality partnerships with insurance brokers and forged some key alliances. In the Telco space, AirtelTigo Insurance which is managed by BIMA and underwritten by Prudential has insured over 1.6 million Ghanaians, by distributing life, accident, hospitalization and disability insurance products. Over 40,000 customers have received claims worth over GHS20.5 million.
To help protect Ghanaians against the financial pressures that come with funeral expenses and the stress of planning funerals following an unexpected death, Prudential Life partnered with Lashibi Funeral Homes, a leading comprehensive funeral services provider to launch the Dignity Farewell Plan. The solution offers a stress-free service based funeral policy that provides flexibility to customize service and cash benefits to suit the customer’s needs.
In Fintech, Prudential has partnered with Korba, a Ghanaian multi-channel electronic platform, owned and by Halges Financial Technologies Ltd, to reward its active customers with free life insurance cover as they run their data and airtime top-ups, fund transfers and bill payment transactions on the Korba platform.
In a novel partnership, Prudential and Surfline Communications, a leading 4G LTE internet service provider teamed up to provide insurance cover for Surfline subscribers who are employees of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). These partnerships have enabled Prudential to insure over 2 million Ghanaians and pay millions more in claims to protect and support families through difficult times.
Tetteh Ayitevie, Chief Strategy Officer at Prudential Life Insurance Ghana said “Distribution plays a key role in Prudential’s ability to reach, attract and retain customers. Diversifying our distribution capabilities helps to ensure that we are seizing opportunities in the market to bring the benefits of life insurance to more Ghanaians. Through our innovative products and strong distribution networks, we meet the growing needs of customers and help to build better lives and stronger communities. ”
Community Investment / Corporate Social Responsibility
Within the 6 years of its operations Prudential has made significant contributions to the communities in which it operates by working with charities and other institutions through funding and the expertise of its staff. Its initiatives are mostly within the fields of Education and Health.
In Education, at the primary level, Prudential developed a financial literacy program adapted by Junior Achievement (JA) into a Primary School curriculum for students between the ages of 7 -12. This is facilitated by volunteers from Prudential Life and JA Ghana for an hour a week for a period of 6 weeks. A total of about 2,000 students have been reached from 21 schools with 38 volunteers. During Covid-19 with the closure of schools, the program’s e-learning version (Cha-Ching Kid$ At Home) via www.cha-ching.com was launched to give parents unlimited access to guides and daily challenges for the benefit of several thousands of children.
In collaboration with Plan International, Prudential implemented a 5-year Senior High School Scholarship project to enable brilliant but needy students complete their 3-year education. In its last year by 2018, the scheme had provided 555 students across the country with scholarships in this GHS 2 million project.
At the tertiary level for the last 5 years, Prudential Life has sought to promote the actuarial capacity of the country through implementing its Prudential Actuarial Support System (PASS). This awards the top 5 graduating students in Actuarial Science in 3 universities (Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, University of Cape Coast and University of Development Studies) with cash prizes, reimbursement of exams fees and study notes for two years after graduation as well as internships. A total of 85 students have benefitted from this half a million cedi project.
Most notable of Prudential’s health contribution to Ghana is its Covid-19 response to help alleviate the impact of the disease in under privileged communities. The Company partnered with The United Nations Populations Fund (UNFPA), United Way Ghana and University of Ghana’s School of Languages to empower and improve the lives of about 25,000 Ghanaians.
Their work with UNFPA involved providing 500 Kayayei in the Tema station area with access to basic healthcare services, personal development and reproductive health education, provision of food supplies and care kits. Through United Way, PPEs were donated to the Ayeduase Health Centre in Kumasi. In deprived communities, 300 families received food supplies and 500 families are enjoying literacy programs for their children who are home as a result of schools being closed.
The University of Ghana School Of Languages has reached out to the Adamrobe deaf community and some minority language speakers in selected market places, to fight stigma and misinformation on COVID-19. Local language interventions in traditional media and on social media platforms are ongoing in Akan, Ga, Ga-Dangbe, Dagbani, Ewe, Hausa, Fafra, Ghanaian Sign Language, Ghanaian Pidgin English, English, and French.
Culture
Prudential has a customer-centric culture which in turn drives high performance expectations of its staff and agents. Prudential’s purpose, mantra and values all point to the state of mind that each staff and agent must be in to execute their duties, which should result in customers being delighted in every way possible such as finding the right product, prompt payment of claims, quick resolution of queries or ease in accessing digital infrastructure to enhance the customer experience.
At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in March, Prudential was the first insurance company to introduce the PruCovered-19, which is a free Covid-19 benefit for its existing and potential customers, covering diagnosis, hospitalization and death as a result of contracting the Corona virus. This in practise shows how Prudential prioritizes its customers and their families by putting them first.
In responding to the market with gap-filling innovative solutions, Prudential has been consistent in launching products, many of them industry firsts, to help Ghanaians get the most out of life.
In 2019, the Company led the market with the PruWealth Plan which has unrivalled benefits in doubling as investment and protection for the customer. The Plan calculates in today’s terms and projects into the future the amount required for the policyholder to achieve their goals in 10 to 15 years. With unlimited cover and a minimum Sum Assured of GHS 100,000.00, the benefits of the PruWealth Plan include: 100% of Sum Assured paid at maturity, 5 years free Insurance cover at the end of the policy term, if no claim is made and 200% of Sum Assured paid in the unfortunate event of a permanent disability or death.
People
Prudential is an employer of choice and ranked number 17 in Joberman’s 2018 report of the best 100 companies to work for in Ghana, the only insurance company in the top 20 ranking. The Company has an excellent record in gender diversity across Corporate Ghana. 5 out of 9 (63%) people at the senior executive level are women. Prudential recognizes and rewards hard work and this is evident in their having the best sales incentives in recognizing agents in the industry.
Grace Adjei-Fordjour, Chief HR Officer at Prudential said “We offer rewarding and progressive career opportunities for our staff and agents with competitive compensation packages and great working conditions. Our people are driven, creative and results-oriented and the output is what we see in the impressive results achieved in just 6 years of Prudential’s operation.
Awards
Prudential Life bagged 4 awards at the 2020 Ghana Insurance Awards; for the CEO of the year, Best Growing Company, Emerging Brand and the Young Achiever of the year. At the same awards ceremony in 2019, Prudential won awards for Good Corporate Governance, Product of the Year and Young Achiever categories.
Over the past 4 years, Prudential has twice won the CSR Insurance Company of the year at the Centre of CSR West Africa Awards for its contribution to educating tomorrow’s leaders.
Cherise Ige, Chief Finance Officer at Prudential and recipient of this year’s Young Achiever award said “We invest to improve relationships with our customers, partners and communities. We create innovative products, improve our operating platforms and capture new opportunities to build new relationships. These awards are validation from industry that we have the right recipe in people and procedures. We dedicate these awards to our customers who are at the heart of our strategy”.
