Providing insurance responsibly

Emerging consumers have a real need for protection and insurance holds the promise to reduce their vulnerability to risks while boosting productivity. At the same time, unserved market segments are usually unfamiliar with insurance, may have low trust in this tool or struggle to understand how it works and how it can generate long-term benefits. Therefore, for insurance to have a significant social and developmental impact, these specificities need to be taken into account through a responsible insurance provision approach. But what does responsible mean? This paper explores the seven principles of responsible insurance that can guide insurance providers to make the changes needed to become more responsible. If applied to the five stages of the value chain, namely 1) product design, 2) marketing, education, and sales, 3) enrolment, renewals, and premium collection, 4) policy administration and servicing and 5) claims management, they can bring substantial long-term benefits not only to clients, but also to provider.