Root Launches Telkom's Digital Insurance Strategy

By partnering with Root, Telkom’s first insurance product was migrated to Root and ready for customers within two months from the first engagement.

As one of South Africa’s prominent telecommunication companies, Telkom is on a drive to build more customer-first digital financial services for their customers. Their goal is to cater for an underserviced area of the market who are still accustomed to in-person financial services that make use of cash-only interactions.

To be successful, Telkom needed a partner who could help them launch digital insurance offerings that are easy for their customers to understand and access. Specifically, they needed to:

• get their existing products up and running fast, and
• cater for their unusual servicing requirements, like bulk processing of embedded loyalty policies at the start of each month.

Root’s ability to set up, test and deploy their insurance products quickly was decisive for Telkom. Here’s how we’ll be collaborating to achieve their goals.

Catering for rapidly changing customer needs and expectations

The world is undergoing a fundamental shift in how products and services are consumed, and COVID-19 is accelerating this shift. Customers have become accustomed to being able to access anything they need using their cellphones - from entertainment and financial services, to groceries and taxis.

This means that being digital is beyond a future aspiration - it is now a baseline requirement for any business. Companies won’t be able to continue selling existing one-size-fits-all products and experiences anymore. Nor will they be able to exclusively use traditional channels, like in-person sales or material marketing, for reaching customers. Telkom has recognised this shift and is on a mission to meet customers where their expectations are at.

Telkom’s mission is to create products that are:

• simple to understand,
• easy to access,
• relevant and solve real customer needs, and
• tailored to customers’ ever rising expectations around service and delivery.

Finding insurance partners that enable digital success

To provide both short-term and long-term insurance products digitally, Telkom did an extensive search to find the right partners.

Since they themselves were making a big move to remote work, they needed to ensure that they made their business more efficient, set their insurance teams up for success, and opened up more capacity to focus on creating tailored insurance products.

The Root platform makes all of this possible in the following ways:

• A low-code platform, which saves time during product setup and maintenance, giving Telkom’s team more time to focus on their customers by building innovative insurance offerings.
• Developer-first APIs, which allows Telkom’s developers to quickly integrate products with digital channels, so they can reach customers over their channels of choice.
• End-to-end integration from quote to claim, which allows Telkom to manage their entire insurance business, thereby increasing business efficiency, reducing complexity and streamlining reporting and compliance.

“Our partnership with Root is instrumental in our digital transformation strategy. Working with Root’s team has been great so far, and we’re looking forward to taking our digital innovation efforts to the next level with them.”
— Sibusiso Ngwenya, Managing Executive of Financial Services at Telkom Business

Schedule a chat today to find out how we can help your insurance initiatives.

At Root, our mission is to rapidly bring about an exciting new world of insurance by creating the API standard for innovators in insurance. This will allow companies to focus on their customers, and build relevant digital experiences that genuinely add value.

We’re very excited to be partnered with one of South Africa’s most prominent telcos, and we look forward to helping them take the leap into digital insurance while building a better, more modern, insurance industry together.