Agricultural tech firm pula scoops end of year InsurTech award

Pula, a Kenyan leading agricultural technology company that develops and provides crops and livestock insurance last Friday scooped the continent’s InsurTech company of the year award during the 6th annual African Insurance Awards held in Lagos, Nigeria. 

The award which targets non-insurers collaborating with insurers to improve customer service delivery, product development and innovation was organized by the Agrican Reinsurance Corporation (Africa Re). 

The company was recognized for successfully managing over 4.3 million smallholder farmers through their Area Risk Index and yield insurance product. It provides insurance services and digital solutions to farmers in Africa. 

The company uses the crop cut experiment as a claim assessment procedure. This assessment relies heavily on ground crop cuts and it’s fed on mobile apps which relay instant feedback to clients. 

After harvest, Pula visits farms to carry out Crop Cut Exercise in order to determine compensation for farmers. 

Pula Insurance is also embedded in products and services that farmers use such as seeds, fertilizers, paygo solar products and credits from financial institutions. 

On accepting the award, Pula’s Co-founder Ms Rose Goslinga, said the award is a testimony of the company’s vision of building resilience and profitability for smallholder farmers across Africa who help drive GDP of the continent.

She noted that with time, agricultural insurance will be a necessity product that will help transform the agriculture industry in Africa owing to the fact that Agriculture in Africa affected by several risks including pests and diseases and climate change. 

“With this award we are more optimistic that agricultural insurance will be a necessity product that will help transform agriculture industry in Africa .We look forward as we close the year and begin a new year to partner with more Africa Governments and private sector to help drive the uptake of agriculture insurance and drive resilience for an additional 10Million farmers” Rose Goslinga -Co-Founder said after the award,” Ms Goslinga said. 

Besides area yield insurance, Pula offers digital services for the insured famers to help them connect with regional and global insurance firms.

Pula has previously worked with quite a number of notable insurance companies across 12 African countries and organizations such as World Food Program, IFAD, Vision Fund, One Acre Fund, Government institutions in Uganda, Kenya, and Nigeria.

It has been able to make agriculture insurance accessible to a number of smallholder farmers who found insurance expensive and hard to acquire. 

In Uganda, Pula works with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) to support the oil seed farmers in Uganda in insuring their products. It also partners with Mukwano Group of companies. 

On top of the area yield insurance, Pula bundles digital services for the insured farmers eg sms agronomical tips during the planting season.

Pula works with National insurance companies across the 12 Africa countries they operate in. 

“We want to send a big shout out to the dedicated staff of Pula, Partners, Investors, Insurers and smallholder farmers that we work with,” Ms Goslinga added.